He sat alone. The African giant looked down at his dwarf-like form
as though in contempt of such half-grown humanity; the Malayan lady's
bodiless head turned its smiling face towards him; scores of dead
beings seemed to contemplate half in pity, half in scorn, their would-be
reviver. Keyork Arabian was used to their company and to their silence.
Far beyond the common human horror of dead humanity, if one of them had
all at once nodded to him and spoken to him he would have started with
delight and listened with rapture. But they were all still dead, and
they neither spoke or moved a finger. A thought that had more hope in it
than any which had passed through his brain for many years now occupied
and absorbed him. A heavy book lay open on the table by his side, and
from time to time he glanced at a phrase which seemed to attract him.
It was always the same phrase, and two words alone sufficed to bring
him back to contemplation of it. Those two words were "Immortality"
and "Soul." He began to speak aloud to himself, being by nature fond of
speech.
"Yes. The soul is immortal. I am quite willing to grant that. But it
does not in any way follow that it is the source of life, or the seat
of intelligence. The Buddhists distinguished it even from the
individuality. And yet life holds it, and when life ends it takes its
departure. How soon? I do not know. It is not a condition of life,
but life is one of its conditions.
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