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 saturated with occult science. At one moment she was inclined to throw them all aside impatiently, and at another was ready to believe that everything was possible.

Dr. Porhoët stood up and stretched out a meditative finger. He spoke in that agreeably academic manner which, at the beginning of their acquaintance, had always entertained Susie, because it contrasted so absurdly with his fantastic utterances.

“It was a strange dream that these wizards cherished. They sought to make themselves beloved of those they cared for and to revenge themselves on those they hated; but above all they sought to become greater than the common run of men and to wield the power of the gods. They hesitated at nothing to gain their ends. But Nature with difficulty allows her secrets to be wrested from her. In vain they lit their furnaces, and in vain they studied their crabbed books, called up the dead, and conjured ghastly spirits. Their reward was disappointment, and wretchedness, poverty, the scorn of men, torture, imprisonment, and shameful death. And yet, perhaps, after all there may be some particle of truth hidden away in these dark places.”

“You never go further than the cautious perhaps,” said Susie. “You never give me any definite opinion.”

“In these matters it is discreet to have no definite opinion,” he smiled, with a shrug of the shoulders. “If a wise man studies the science of the occult, his duty is not to laugh at everything, but to seek