’When you begin to talk of magic and mysticism I confess that I am out of my depth.’

’Yet magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects.  Will, love, and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician.  Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen.’

‘Will you tell us what the powers are that the adept possesses?’

’They are enumerated in a Hebrew manuscript of the sixteenth century, which is in my possession.  The privileges of him who holds in his right hand the Keys of Solomon and in his left the Branch of the Blossoming Almond are twenty-one.  He beholds God face to face without dying, and converses intimately with the Seven Genii who command the celestial army.  He is superior to every affliction and to every fear.  He reigns with all heaven and is served by all hell.  He holds the secret of the resurrection of the dead, and the key of immortality.’

’If you possess even these you have evidently the most varied attainments,’ said Arthur ironically.

‘Everyone can make game of the unknown,’ retorted Haddo, with a shrug of his massive shoulders.

Arthur did not answer.  He looked at Haddo curiously.  He asked himself whether he believed seriously these preposterous things, or whether he was amusing himself in an elephantine way at their expense.  His mariner was earnest, but there was an odd expression about the mouth, a hard twinkle of the eyes, which seemed to belie it.  Susie was vastly entertained.  It diverted her enormously to hear occult matters discussed with apparent gravity in this prosaic tavern.  Dr Porhoet broke the silence.

’Arago, after whom has been named a neighbouring boulevard, declared that doubt was a proof of modesty, which has rarely interfered with the progress of science.  But one cannot say the same of incredulity, and he that uses the word impossible outside of pure mathematics is lacking in prudence.  It should be remembered that Lactantius proclaimed belief in the existence of antipodes inane, and Saint Augustine of Hippo added that in any case there could be no question of inhabited lands.’

‘That sounds as if you were not quite sceptical, dear doctor,’ said Miss Boyd.

’In my youth I believed nothing, for science had taught me to distrust even the evidence of my five senses,’ he replied, with a shrug of the shoulders.  ’But I have seen many things in the East which are inexplicable by the known processes of science.  Mr Haddo has given you one definition of magic, and I will give you another.  It may be described merely as the intelligent utilization of forces which are unknown, contemned, or misunderstood of the vulgar.  The young man who settles in the East sneers at the ideas of magic which surround him, but I know not what there is in the atmosphere that saps his unbelief.  When he has sojourned for some years among Orientals, he comes insensibly to share the opinion of many sensible men that perhaps there is something in it after all.’