It was not
more than a week after registration. In the time ensuing Fenton
became just as great an enthusiast as myself. His idea, of course,
was chimerical and a blind; his main purpose was to get in with me
where he could argue me out of my folly.
He wound up by being a convert of the professor.
Then came the great day. The night of the announcement we had a
long discussion. It was a deep question. For all of my faith in
the professor I was hardly prepared for a thing like this. Strange
to say I was the sceptic; and stranger still, it was Hobart who
took the side of the doctor.
"Why not?" he said. "It merely comes down to this: you grant that
a thing is possible and then you deny the possibility of a proof--
outside of your abstract. That's good paradox, Harry; but almighty
poor logic. If it is so it certainly can be proven. There's not
one reason in the world why we can't have something concrete. The
professor is right. I am with him. He's the only professor in all
the ages."
Well, it turned out as it did. It was a terrible blow to us all.
Most of the world took it as a great murder or an equally great
case of abduction. There were but few, even in the university, who
embraced the side of the doctor. It was a case of villainy, of a
couple of remarkably clever rogues and a trusting scholar.
But there was one whose faith was not diminished. He had been one
of the last to come under the influence of the doctor.
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