"Where?"
"Here," tapping his brown, wrinkled forehead, "in my brain. I am going to turn the phosphorus of my brain into gold. All the things that have been made by man have been made out of the phosphorus of the brain, why not gold also?"
"Truly, why not gold also?"
"You were right when you said I should have few believers at first. In the beginning there will be little or no profit. Bah, let me not talk like a fool. Of course, you and I know that gold cannot be made until we discover the universal atom and learn how to handle it. My discovery is a combination of substances which will defy all the known tests for gold. The dry or the wet method will be powerless confronted with it. The cupel and acid will proclaim it gold. It will scorn the advances of oxygen and remain fixed a thousand years in the snowy heart of the furnace. It will be as flexible as ribbed grass, as ductile as the web of a spider, as malleable as the air between the gold-beater's skins.
"You say it will be almost as dear as gold itself at the beginning."
"Yes, almost as dear as gold."
"How much will it cost?"
"I have not yet counted up all the cost. There are certain ingredients the cost of which it is difficult to ascertain," he said in an abstracted voice.
"This is Mrs. Ashton's house."
Leigh aroused out of the abstraction and looked up. Miss Ashton was at the open window of the drawing-room.