You know that he is learned in every
branch of the occult, and perhaps he might help us.'

But Arthur pulled himself together.

'It's absurd. We mustn't give way to superstition. Haddo is merely a
scoundrel and a charlatan. He's worked on our nerves as he's worked on
poor Margaret's. It's impossible to suppose that he has any powers
greater than the common run of mankind.'

'Even after all you've seen with your own eyes?'

'If my eyes show me what all my training assures me is impossible, I can
only conclude that my eyes deceive me.'

'Well, I shall run over to Paris.'

13

Some weeks later Dr Porhoet was sitting among his books in the quiet, low
room that overlooked the Seine. He had given himself over to a pleasing
melancholy. The heat beat down upon the noisy streets of Paris, and the
din of the great city penetrated even to his fastness in the Ile Saint
Louis. He remembered the cloud-laden sky of the country where he was
born, and the south-west wind that blew with a salt freshness. The long
streets of Brest, present to his fancy always in a drizzle of rain, with
the lights of cafes reflected on the wet pavements, had a familiar charm.
Even in foul weather the sailor-men who trudged along them gave one a
curious sense of comfort. There was delight in the smell of the sea and
in the freedom of the great Atlantic. And then he thought of the green
lanes and of the waste places with their scented heather, the fair broad
roads that led from one old sweet town to another, of the _Pardons_ and
their gentle, sad crowds. Dr Porhoet gave a sigh.

'It is good to be born in the land of Brittany,' he smiled.

But his _bonne_ showed Susie in, and he rose with a smile to greet her.
She had been in Paris for some time, and they had seen much of one
another. He basked in the gentle sympathy with which she interested
herself in all the abstruse, quaint matters on which he spent his time;
and, divining her love for Arthur, he admired the courage with which she
effaced herself. They had got into the habit of eating many of their
meals together in a quiet house opposite the Cluny called La Reine
Blanche, and here they had talked of so many things that their
acquaintance was grown into a charming friendship.

'I'm ashamed to come here so often,' said Susie, as she entered. 'Matilde
is beginning to look at me with a suspicious eye.'

'It is very good of you to entertain a tiresome old man,' he smiled,
as he held her h