am mistaken greatly, the ages on which the mists of memory have long lain undisturbed."
He came across the floor very quickly with a finger on his lips, looking at me with a peculiar searchingness of gaze.
"Are you aware yet of anything—odd here?" he asked in a whisper. "Anything you cannot quite define, for instance. Tell me, Hubbard, for I want to know all your impressions. They may help me."
I shook my head, avoiding his gaze, for there was something in the eyes that scared me a little. But he was so in earnest that I set my mind keenly searching.
"Nothing yet," I replied truthfully, wishing I could confess to a real emotion; "nothing but the strange heat of the place."
He gave a little jump forward in my direction.
"The heat again, that's it!" he exclaimed, as though glad of my corroboration. "And how would you describe it, perhaps?" he asked quickly, with a hand on the door knob.
"It doesn't seem like ordinary physical heat," I said, casting about in my thoughts for a definition.
"More a mental heat," he interrupted, "a glowing of thought and desire, a sort of feverish warmth of the spirit. Isn't that it?"
I admitted that he had exactly described my sensations.
"Good!" he said, as he opened the door, and with an indescribable gesture that combined a warning to be ready with a sign of praise for my correct intuition, he was gone.
I hurried after him, and found the two men waiting for me in front of the fire.