Mr. Harland listened with his usual air of cynical tolerance and incredulity.
"I have heard this sort of nonsense before,"—he said—"I have even read in otherwise reliable scientific journals about the 'auras' of people affecting us with antipathies or sympathies for or against them. But it's a merely fanciful suggestion and has no foundation in reality."
"Why did you wish me to explain, then?" asked Santoris—"I can only tell you what I know, and—what I see!"
Harland moved restlessly, holding his cigar between his fingers and looking at it curiously to avoid, as I thought, the steadfast brilliancy of the compelling eyes that were fixed upon him.
"These 'auras,'" he went on, indifferently, "are nothing but suppositions. I grant you that certain discoveries are being made concerning the luminosity of trees and plants which in some states of the atmosphere give out rays of light,—but that human beings do the same I decline to believe."
"Of course!" and Santoris leaned back in his chair easily, as though at once dismissing the subject from his mind—"A man born blind must needs decline to believe in the pleasures of sight."
Harland's wrinkled brow deepened its furrows in a frown.
"Do you mean to tell me,—do you DARE to tell me"—he said—"that you see any 'aura,' as you call it, round my personality?"
"I do, most assuredly,"—answered Santoris—"I see it as distinctly as I see yourself in the midst of it. But there is no actual light in it,—it is mere grey mist,—a mist of miasma."
"Thank you!" and Harland laughed harshly—"You are complimentary!"