conversation to matters on which Haddo was expert. She had read the book with delight; and, her mind all aflame with those strange histories wherein fact and fancy were so wonderfully mingled, she was eager to know more. The long toil in which so many had engaged, always to lose their fortunes, often to suffer persecution and torture, interested her no less than the accounts, almost authenticated, of those who had succeeded in their extraordinary quest.
She turned to Dr. Porhoët.
“You are a bold man to assert that now and then the old alchemists actually did make gold,” she said.
“I have not gone quite so far as that,” he smiled. “I assert merely that, if evidence as conclusive were offered of any other historical event, it would be credited beyond doubt. We can disbelieve these circumstantial details only by coming to the conclusion beforehand that it is impossible they should be true.”
“I wish you would write that life of Paracelsus which you suggest in your preface.”
Dr. Porhoët, smiling, shook his head.
“I don’t think I shall ever do that now,” he said, thoughtfully. “Yet he is the most interesting of all the alchemists, for he offers the fascinating problem of an immensely complex character. It is impossible to know to what extent he was a charlatan and to what a man of serious science.”
Susie glanced at Oliver Haddo, who sat in silence, his heavy face in shadow, his eyes fixed
