Page:The Land of Mist.pdf/247

 CHAPTER XV

ALONE was bound in honour not to speak of love to Enid Challenger, but looks can speak, and so their communications had not broken down completely. In all other ways he adhered closely to the agreement, though the situation was a difficult one. It was the more difficult since he was a constant visitor to the Professor, and now that the irritation of the debate was over, a very welcome one. The one object of Malone’s life was to get the great man’s sympathetic consideration of those psychic subjects which had gained such a hold upon himself. This he pursued with assiduity, but also with great caution, for he knew that the lava was thin and that a fiery ex¬ plosion was always possible. Once or twice it came and caused Malone to drop the subject for a week or two until the ground seemed a little more firm.

Malone developed a remarkable cunning in his approaches. One favourite device was to consult Challenger upon some scientific point — on the zoo¬ logical importance of the Straits of Banda, for ex¬ ample, or the Insects of the Malay Archipelago, and lead him on until Challenger in due course would ex¬ plain that our knowledge on the point was due to Alfred Russel Wallace. “ Oh, really ! To Wallace the Spiritualist ! ” Malone would say in an innocent voice, on which Challenger would glare and change the topic. 243