At the sound of Rénèe's firm step he turned, and the sight of his face startled her, for he wore a glass mask bound tightly round forehead and chin by strips of black leather.
"Mademoiselle le Meung!" he cried, in tones of surprise and vexation, and, quickly covering his mixtures with silver lids, he took off the mask and looked at her keenly with his bright tired eyes.
"You did not wish to see me," remarked Rénèe.
"No," replied Duprès, at once courteous and composed, "you are wrong—no one could have been more welcome, but I am engaged on an important experiment, and told the lad I did not wish to be disturbed."
"Oh, Monsieur Duprès," said Rénèe, "do not seek to delude me with these labours of yours—I knew you in Dresden."
He placed a deep-seated leather chair for her in front of the cedar-wood fire which emitted a perfumed heat, and he answered calmly—
"You despise me and what I do, but there again you are wrong. If I can make invisible ink, potent sleeping-draughts, swift poisons, keen medicines, and cosmetics to keep women beautiful, am I not of some use in the great affairs of the world?"
"Ah, you suit your argument to your listener," replied Rénèe. "Since you cannot dazzle me with your magic and your alchemy you speak straightly, and I am thankful for it."
"Blaspheme neither magic nor alchemy," he returned thoughtfully. "All miracles are possible, but our wit is so muddy we may not achieve them. I have talked with angels and glimpsed infinity as certainly as I have been drunk and a cheat."
"Maybe," said Rénèe; she sat still, looking round the strange room full of curious pictures and diagrams, planetary signs, shelves of bottles and jars, rows of ancient books and astronomical instruments. She was tired, as always, and, as always, sad in spirit, and she felt that what she had to say was an effort difficult to make.