’From a friend of mine?—­Are you sure it was from a friend of mine?’

The man’s attempt at coolness did him credit,—­but it did not deceive me.  That he thought I was endeavouring to bluff him out of his secret I perceived quite clearly; that it was a secret which he would only render with his life I was beginning to suspect.  Had it not been for Marjorie, I should have cared nothing,—­his affairs were his affairs; though I realised perfectly well that there was something about the man which, from the scientific explorer’s point of view, might be well worth finding out.  Still, as I say, if it had not been for Marjorie, I should have let it go; but, since she was so intimately concerned in it, I wondered more and more what it could be.

My attitude towards what is called the supernatural is an open one.  That all things are possible I unhesitatingly believe,—­I have, even in my short time, seen so many so-called impossibilities proved possible.  That we know everything, I doubt;—­that our great-great-great-great-grandsires, our forebears of thousands of years ago, of the extinct civilisations, knew more on some subjects than we do, I think is, at least, probable.  All the legends can hardly be false.

Because men claimed to be able to do things in those days which we cannot do, and which we do not know how they did we profess to think that their claims are finally dismissed by exclaiming—­lies!  But it is not so sure.

For my part, what I had seen I had seen.  I had seen some devil’s trick played before my very eyes.  Some trick of the same sort seemed to have been played upon my Marjorie,—­I repeat that I write ‘my Marjorie’ because, to me, she will always be ‘my’ Marjorie!  It had driven her half out of her senses.  As I looked at Lessingham, I seemed to see her at his side, as I had seen her not long ago, with her white, drawn face, and staring eyes, dumb with an agony of fear.  Her life was bidding fair to be knit with his,—­ what Upas tree of horror was rooted in his very bones?  The thought that her sweet purity was likely to be engulfed in a devil’s slough in which he was swallowing was not to be endured.  As I realised that the man was more than my match at the game which I was playing—­in which such vital interests were at stake!—­my hands itched to clutch him by the throat, and try another way.

Doubtless my face revealed my feelings, because, presently, he said,

’Are you aware how strangely you are looking at me, Atherton?  Were my countenance a mirror I think you would be surprised to see in it your own.’

I drew back from him,—­I daresay, sullenly.

’Not so surprised as, yesterday morning, you would have been to have seen yours,—­at the mere sight of a pictured scarab.’

‘How easily you quarrel.’

‘I do not quarrel.’

’Then perhaps it’s I. If that is so, then, at once, the quarrel’s ended,—­pouf! it’s done.  Mr Lindon, I fear, because, politically, we differ, regards me as anathema.  Has he put some of his spirit into you?—­You are a wiser man.’