"For one moment Raymond sat as motionless as stone; then he started up with a shrill cry. He leaned over and looked into her face; that smile was still upon her white lips.
"'Agnes!' he cried; then again, 'Agnes!' But the smiling lips never answered; she was dead.
"Raymond slowly turned, and walked heavily and stupidly out of the place, closing the door behind him. At the head of the shaft he mechanically opened the slide of the lantern, and blew out the half-burned candle, and then set the lantern upon the shelf within, as he had been used to do. He closed the trap, and lowered the bar, and snapped the padlock in the staple; then, again, with the same slow, heavy tread, he left the vaulted room, ascended the stone steps, and threaded the passage-way. He did not go back into the master's house, but passed out at the arched gate-way where we, Oliver, entered. Before he went out into the street beyond he laid his hand upon his breast to make sure the silver box containing the talisman was there; it was all that he had saved from his ruin."
IV.
"From that time Raymond Lulli led a wandering, irregular, eventful life. Under the spur of his remorse he went first to Rome and then to Tunis, where, until his life was threatened on account of his efforts to convert the Mussulmans, he devoted himself partly to the fulfilment of his original vow, partly to the further study of alchemy. After that he lived for a while in Milan; after that he went to England, where, as I have heard, he transmuted lead and quicksilver into gold to the amount of six millions rose nobles; after that he returned again to Rome; and after that for a second time to Africa, where he took up his abode at Bona.
"Now there was at that time at Bona a famous and learned professor, who had devoted himself more particularly to the study of demonology. It is hardly likely that you have ever heard his name; it was Yusef Ben Djani. I know of nobody since his time who approached him in his knowledge of the science unless, perhaps, it was the great Cornelius Agrippa.
"This learned scholar held that the power of man's will was such that, under certain circumstances, it could be so far impressed upon those diffused forces of life about us as to materialize or concentrate them, and so render them cognizant to the human understanding, or, in other words, visible. Now, Oliver, it is very well known that one man may so impress his will upon another as to render that other will entirely subservient to his own. Under such conditions, the one so impressed sees, feels, smells, tastes, and senses only as the superior will orders; he moves, speaks, and exists as the other commands. If that power, Yusef Ben Djani argued, could impress material men in this world, why could it not impress men in the world immediately beyond? Is not a man, he reasoned, the same man after quitting this world as when he lived in the body? Why, then, is he not as subject to that psychological power there as here, and why, then, could he not be influenced there as well as here? Such an influence Yusef Ben Djani did exert, and succeeded. He materialized those quiescent forces of life, and brought them into such communion with himself that he was able to compel them to that certain exudation of life in quiescence which we in this world call matter. Do you understand me, Oliver?"
Oliver shook his head. "No," said he, "I do not." He had tried to follow the other so far as he was able, but he had long gotten beyond the power of comprehension; the words fell upon his ears one after the other like blows, until his head hummed like a beehive.