p and form into ominous words the night wind that moans
through their skulls. Heaven and Hell are in its province; and all forms,
lovely and hideous; and love and hate. With Circe's wand it can change
men into beasts of the field, and to them it can give a monstrous
humanity. Life and death are in the right hand and in the left of him who
knows its secrets. It confers wealth by the transmutation of metals and
immortality by its quintessence.'

Margaret could not hear what he said. A gradual lethargy seized her under
his baleful glance, and she had not even the strength to wish to free
herself. She seemed bound to him already by hidden chains.

'If you have powers, show them,' she whispered, hardly conscious that she
spoke.

Suddenly he released the enormous tension with which he held her. Like a
man who has exerted all his strength to some end, the victory won, he
loosened his muscles, with a faint sigh of exhaustion. Margaret did not
speak, but she knew that something horrible was about to happen. Her
heart beat like a prisoned bird, with helpless flutterings, but it seemed
too late now to draw back. Her words by a mystic influence had settled
something beyond possibility of recall.

On the stove was a small bowl of polished brass in which water was kept
in order to give a certain moisture to the air. Oliver Haddo put his hand
in his pocket and drew out a little silver box. He tapped it, with a
smile, as a man taps a snuff-box, and it opened. He took an infinitesimal
quantity of a blue powder that it contained and threw it on the water in
the brass bowl. Immediately a bright flame sprang up, and Margaret gave a
cry of alarm. Oliver looked at her quickly and motioned her to remain
still. She saw that the water was on fire. It was burning as brilliantly,
as hotly, as if it were common gas; and it burned with the same dry,
hoarse roar. Suddenly it was extinguished. She leaned forward and saw
that the bowl was empty.

The water had been consumed, as though it were straw, and not a drop
remained. She passed her hand absently across her forehead.

'But water cannot burn,' she muttered to herself.

It seemed that Haddo knew what she thought, for he smiled strangely.

'Do you know that nothing more destructive can be invented than this blue
powder, and I have enough to burn up all the water in Paris? Who dreamt
that water might burn like chaff?'

He paused, seeming to forget her presence. He looked thoughtfully at the