"I have studied the proposition that opium may be a power to effect what we seek, and, in connection with it, have studied the hospitals that make a specialty of such cases."
There was a long silence, and presently Edward said:
"Good-night." The professor gazed about him. "How was it you used to say good-night, Edward? Old customs are good. It is not possible that the violin has been lost." He smiled and Edward got his instrument and played. He knew the old man's favorites; the little folk-melodies of the Rhine country, bits of love songs, mostly, around which the loving players of Germany have woven so many beautiful fancies. And in the playing Edward himself was quieted.
The light from the hall downstairs streamed out along the gravel walk, and in the glare was a man standing with arms folded and head bent forward. A tall woman came and gently laid her hand upon him. He started violently, tossed his arms aloft and rushed into the darkness. She waited in silence a moment and then slowly followed him.
When Edward opened the morning paper, which he did while waiting for the return of the professor, who had wandered away before breakfast, he was shocked by the announcement of Montjoy's defeat. The result of the vote in the remote county had been secured by horseback service organized by an enterprising journal, and telegraphed. The official returns were given.
Already the campaign had drifted far into the past with him; years seemed to have gone by when he arose from the sick-bed and now it scarcely seemed possible that he, Edward Morgan, was the same man who labored among the voters, shouted himself hoarse and kept the headquarters so successfully. It must have been a dream.
But Mary! That part was real. He wrote her a few lines expressing his grief.
And then came the professor, with his adventure! He had met a young man out making photographs and had interested him with descriptions of recent successful attempts to photograph in colors. And then they had gone to the wing-room and examined the results of the young man's efforts to produce pictures upon living substances. "He has some of the most original theories and ideas upon the subject I have heard," said the German. "Not wild beyond the possibilities of invention, however, and I am not sure but that he has taught me a lesson in common sense. 'Find how nature photographs upon living tissue,' said the young man, 'and when you have reduced your pictures to the invisible learn to re-enlarge them; perhaps you will learn to enlarge nature's invisibles.'