I was startled to hear her addressing me by name, and then calmly begging me to resume my seat on the bench under the arbor.  She sat down also, her flame-coloured hair and bare shoulders gleaming in the darkness.  She was the soul of directness and candour, and after a thoughtful, searching look into my face she came to the point at once.  She wanted to hear about Farquharson—­from me.

“Of course, my uncle has given me a very full account of what he learned from Mr. Leavitt, and yet many things puzzle me—­this Mr. Leavitt most of all.”

“A queer chap,” I epitomized him.  “Frankly, I don’t quite make him out, Miss Stanleigh—­marooning himself on that infernal island and seemingly content to spend his days there.”

“Is he so old?” she caught me up quickly.

“No, he isn’t,” I reflected.  “Of course, it’s difficult to judge ages out here.  The climate, you know.  Leavitt’s well under forty, I should say.  But that’s a most unhealthy spot he has chosen to live in.”

“Why does he stay there?”

I explained about the volcano.  “You can have no idea what an obsession it is with him.  There isn’t a square foot of its steaming, treacherous surface that he hasn’t been over, mapping new fissures, poking into old lava-beds, delving into the crater itself on favourable days—­”

“Isn’t it dangerous?”

“In a way, yes.  The volcano itself is harmless enough.  It smokes unpleasantly now and then, splutters and rumbles as if about to obliterate all creation, but for all its bluster it only manages to spill a trickle or two of fresh lava down its sides—­just tamely subsides after deluging Leavitt with a shower of cinders and ashes.  But Leavitt won’t leave it alone.  He goes poking into the very crater, half strangling himself in its poisonous fumes, scorching the shoes off his feet, and once, I believe, he lost most of his hair and eyebrows—­a narrow squeak.  He throws his head back and laughs at any word of caution.  To my notion, it’s foolhardy to push a scientific curiosity to that extreme.”

“Is it, then, just scientific curiosity?” mused Miss Stanleigh.

Something in her tone made me stop short.  Her eyes had lifted to mine—­almost appealingly, I fancied.  Her innocence, her candour, her warm beauty, which was like a pale phosphorescence in the starlit darkness—­all had their potent effect upon me in that moment.  I felt impelled to a sudden burst of confidence.

“At times I wonder.  I’ve caught a look in his eyes, when he’s been down on his hands and knees, staring into some infernal vent-hole—­a look that is—­well, uncanny, as if he were peering into the bowels of the earth for something quite outside the conceptions of science.  You might think that volcano had worked some spell over him, turned his mind.  He prattles to it or storms at it as if it were a living creature.  Queer, yes; and he’s impressive, too, with a sort of magnetic personality that attracts and repels you violently at the same time.  He’s like a cake of ice dipped in alcohol and set aflame.  I can’t describe him.  When he talks—­”