"There you are, at cross-purposes at once," declared Povey. "I refer to hints, half-lights, intuitions, signs that only the most sensitive among us, those with psychic divination, with spiritual discernment—that only the privileged and those developed in advance of the Race—can know. And, instantly you produce your microscope, as though I offered you the muscles of a tadpole to dissect."
They glared at one another. "We shall never get progress your way," Povey fumed, withdrawing his head and neck between his shoulders.
"Returning to the Middle Ages, on the other hand," mentioned Devonham, "seems like advancing in a circle, doesn't it?"
"Dr. Devonham," interrupted a pretty, fair-haired girl with an intense manner, "forgive me for breaking up your interesting talk, but you come so seldom, you know, and there's a lady here who is dying to be introduced. She has just seen crimson flashing in your aura, and she wants to ask—do you mind very much?" She smiled so sweetly at him, and at Mr. Povey, too, who was said to be engaged to her, though none believed it, that annoyance was not possible. "She says she simply must ask you if you were feeling anger. Anger, you know, produces red or crimson in one's visible atmosphere," she explained charmingly. She led him off, forgetting, however, her purpose en route, since they presently sat down side by side in a quiet corner and began to enjoy what seemed an interesting tête-à-tête, while the aura-seeing lady waited impatiently and observed them, without the aid of clairvoyance, from a distance.
"And your qualifications for membership?" asked Devonham. "I wonder if I may ask——?"
"But you'd laugh at me, if I told you," she answered simply, fingering a silver talisman that hung from her neck, a six-pointed star with zodiacal signs traced round a rose, rosa mystica, evidently. "I'm so afraid of doctors."
Devonham shook his head decidedly, asserting vehemently his interest, whereupon she told him her little private dream delightfully, without pose or affectation, yet shyly and so sincerely that he proved his assertion by a genuine interest.
"And does that protect you among your daily troubles?" he asked, pointing to her little silver talisman. He had already commented sympathetically upon her account of saving her new puppies from drowning, having dreamed the night before that she saw them gasping in a pail of water, the cruel under-gardener looking on. "Do you wear it always, or only on special occasions like this?"
"Oh, Miss Milligan made that," she told him, blushing a little. "She's rather poor. She earns her living by designing——"
"Oh!"