"He calls Madame Provana the first comer!" exclaimed the youngest and pertest of the circle.
"I call myself the first comer where Symeon is concerned. I am not one of his initiated. I belong to the outer herd of wretches who eat butcher's meat and attach importance to dinner. Mr. Symeon condescends when he gives me half an hour of a life that is spent mostly in the clouds."
"I would give worlds to know him," said Lady Susan. "I have taken his quarterly, The Unseen, from the beginning, His articles upon the spiritual life are adorable, but I am not conceited enough to pretend to understand him."
"If people understood him, he would be less admired," said Rutherford.
"What does he do?" asked the youngest and flippantest. "I am always hearing of Mr. Symeon and his spook magazine; but what does he do? Is it thought-reading, slate-writing, materialisation? Does he float up to the ceiling, as Home did? My Grannie swears she saw him, yes, positively floating, in that large house by the Marble Arch."
"Mr. Symeon does nothing," replied Claude. "He is the high priest of the Transcendental. He talks."
"How disappointing!"
"Most people find that enough."
"They are bored?"
"No; they are fascinated. Mr. Symeon is more magnetic than Gladstone was. He must have stolen those green eyes of his from a mermaid. His disciples get nothing but his eyes and his talk; and they believe in him as Orientals believe in Buddha. I have heard people say he is Buddha—Gautama's latest incarnation."