Conjurer. They turned the tables. They turned the tables upon me. I don't wonder at your believing in fairies. As long as these things were my servants they seemed to me like fairies. When they tried to be my masters.... I found they were not fairies. I found the spirits with whom I at least had come in contact were evil ... awfully, unnaturally evil.
Patricia. Did they say so?
Conjurer. Don't talk of what they said. I was a loose fellow, but I had not fallen so low as such things. I resisted them; and after a pretty bad time, psychologically speaking, I cut the connexion. But they were always tempting me to use the supernatural power I had got from them. It was not very great, but it was enough to move things about, to alter lights, and so on. I don't know whether you realize that it's rather a strain on a man to drink bad coffee at a coffee-stall when he knows he has just enough magic in him to make a bottle of champagne walk out of an empty shop.
Patricia. I think you behaved very well.
Conjurer. [Bitterly.] And when I fell at last it was for nothing half so clean and Christian as champagne. In black blind pride and anger and all kinds of heathenry, because of the impudence of a schoolboy, I called on the fiends and they obeyed.
Patricia. [Touches his arm.] Poor fellow!
Conjurer. Your goodness is the only goodness that never goes wrong.
Patricia. And what are we to do with Morris? I—I believe you now, my dear. But he—he will never believe.
Conjurer. There is no bigot like the atheist. I must think.
[Walks towards the garden windows. The other men reappear to arrest his movement.