because trickery is often more accurate than
real revelation. I will confess to you that this is the rock upon which
my powers and my mission seem sometimes most likely to split. But I
console myself by thinking that all of us, great as well as small, must
be on the verge of it sometimes. Let me draw you a parallel. Perhaps
you know something of the old alchemists. They had laid hold on the
edge of chemistry. But because that truth came confused, because they
all had things by the wrong handle, a thousand of them confused truth
with error until, in the end, they did not know right from wrong. This
force in which you and I are interested is a little like chemistry--it
may be called mental and spiritual chemistry. But because it deals with
the unseen, not with the seen, it is a thousand times more uncertain
and baffling. We have ears, eyes, touch--a great equipment--to perceive
gold, silver, stones, trees, water. But we have only this mind, a
mystery even to ourselves, to perceive an idea, a concept. I wish that
I could express it better"--she broke off suddenly--"and very likely
I'm boring you--but when your whole soul is full of a thing it _will_
overflow." She smiled upon Norcross, as though for sympathy. If he gave
it, his face did not betray him.

"Then you say," returned Norcross with one of his characteristic shifts
to childlike abruptness, "that you never faked?"

Mrs. Markham, as though daring him to provoke her by his
forthrightness, leaned forward and regarded him with amusement on her
lips. "Men are only boys," she said. "My dear sir--I could almost say
'my dear boy'--if I had, would I admit it? You must take me as I am and
form your own conclusions. I shall not help you with that, even though
I admit to you that I don't care very much what your conclusions are.

"To be serious," she added, "it is not a pleasant suspicion to hear of
one's self. Now take yourself--you are a man of large practical
affairs--"

Norcross leaned forward a trifle, as though expecting revelation to
begin. She caught the motion.

"Don't think I'm telling you _that_ from any supernormal source," she
said. "That's my own intelligence--my woman's intuition if you like to
call it so. Your air, your ineptness to understand philosophy, show
that you are not in one of the learned professions, and it is easy to
see, if I may make so bold"--here she smiled a trifle--"that you are no
ordinary person. You have the air of great things about y