of mankind. They are willing to lose their all if only they have chance of a great prize. Is it nothing not only to know the future, as did the prophets of old, but by making it to force the very gates of the unknown?”
Suddenly the bantering gravity with which he spoke fell away from him. A singular light came into his eyes, and his voice was hoarse. Now at last they saw that he was serious.
“What should you know of that lust for great secrets which consumes me to the bottom of my soul!”
“Anyhow, I’m perfectly delighted to meet a magician,” cried Susie gaily.
“Ah, call me not that,” he said, with a flourish of his fat hands, regaining immediately his portentous flippancy. “I would be known rather as the Brother of the Shadow.”
“I should have thought you could be only a very distant relation of anything so unsubstantial,” said Arthur, with a laugh.
Oliver’s face turned red with furious anger. His strange blue eyes grew cold with hatred, and he thrust out his scarlet lips till he had the ruthless expression of a Nero. The gibe at his obesity had caught him on the raw. Susie feared that he would make so insulting a reply that a quarrel must ensue.
“Well, really, if we want to go to the fair we must start,” she said quickly. “And Marie is dying to be rid of us.”
They got up, and clattered down the stairs into the street.
