evocation of the spirit of a mediaeval alchemist, a Fleming of the
fourteenth century, and wonder often interrupted her attention. She
could not reconcile herself to the belief that he was serious in all he
said, and he often spoke of the Kabbala, which apparently was the secret
ritual of a sect of which he was a member, perhaps a priest. Between
whiles she thought of the indignation with which Owen would hear such
beliefs. Then tempted as by the edge of an abyss, she admired Ulick's
strange appearance, which helped to make his story credible. She could
no longer disbelieve, so simply did he tell his tales, his white teeth
showing, and his dark eyes rapidly brightening and clouding as he
mentioned different spells and their effects. But so illusive were his
narratives that she never quite understood; he seemed always a little
ahead of her; she often had to pause to consider his meaning, and when
she had grasped it, he was speaking of something else, and she had
missed the links. To understand him better she attempted to argue with
him, and he told her of the incredible explanation that Charcot, the
eminent hypnotist, had had to fall back upon in order to account
materialistically for some of his hypnotic experiments, and she was
forced to admit that the spiritualistic explanation was the easier to
believe.

She was most interested when he spoke of the College of Adepts and the
Rosicrucians. Life as he spoke seemed to become intense and exalted, and
the invisible seemed on the point of becoming visible when he told her
how the brotherhood greeted each other with, "Man is God, and son of
God, and there is no God but man." He repeated all he could remember of
their terrible oath. The College of Adepts, she learned, was the
antithesis of the monastery. The monastery is passive spirituality, the
College of Adepts is active spirituality; the monastery abases itself
before God, the Adepts seek to become as gods. "There is a spiritual
stream," he said, "that flows behind the circumstance of history, and
they claim that all religions are but vulgarisations of their doctrine.
The Adept, by conquering passion and ignorance, attains a mastery over
change, and so prolongs his life beyond any human limit."

She begged Ulick not to forget to bring the book of magic which
contained the oath of the Rosicrucians.

It was now after eight, and they returned home, watching the white mists
creeping up the blue fields. The sky was lucent a