His gaze was drawn back to the crucible. In the thin haze above it a face seemed to shine. Avidly he gave himself to the spell his tight-strung imagination had conjured--a face oval and delicately tinted; lips joyously curved; gray eyes not large, but brimming with enthusiasm, fearlessness, and truth; a white brow beneath simply arranged light hair. 'Let me bring with an avowal all that you have now, more!--for in your life there can't be anything bigger than my love. And it's that which makes the deal right. Don't judge me yet! Wait until I've finished, and grant me that it's worth while.' He whispered to the face, and his breath made little swirls and eddies in the haze about it. The filmy curves wafted toward him, bringing it close to his lips. The lids fluttered. Then an acrid odor filled his throat and nostrils. The face vanished. He started back, distraught. A rushing recollection of Maxineff's tragedies came to him, more vivid even than the face. Halsey, who jarred the nitro, had been annihilated. Ewell was mad from the violent termination of an experiment similar to that now in development. 'A year ago!' Noakes said, 'and still Ewell lives and raves!' How alike the cases were! The difference lay in the crucible. If the mixture there were properly prepared, added heat would metamorphose it calmly from its present harmlessness into something new, wonderful, deadly. It would become imbued with marvelous possibility, a thing for which royal military bureaus, imperial navies, would pay a great price. A twist of the lever would do it. Yet how alike-- And Ewell was mad, injured gruesomely, living dead. Again the blinking switch caught him, but he shrugged away its evil suggestiveness. He sought to flee the strain of the moment, to make it seem natural and like the smaller risks of his daily occupation. He assumed a tottering bravado, and as he put his hand to the lever, he smiled crookedly. A light, quick tread sounded on the walk outside, on the double step; as the knob turned, a voice said,' May I come, Mr. Alchemist?' His hand left the lever as if it pricked him. 'You!' 'Am I a wraith?' Noakes looked at her silently. In the moment's abstraction her presence seemed a manifestation of some psychic conduction which he tried lamely to understand--here, now, in a moment of danger of which she unknowingly was the moving force. 'Then exorcise me quickly, but don't sprinkle me with acid; it would be fatal to my clothes.' Noakes warmed to the aura of light and cheer about her. 'There isn't an alkali in the shop; I won't endanger you,' he replied easily. She moved into the room and paused a moment near the stand. 'Mrs. Max says you are confining yourself too closely. I've been with her all morning.' While she spoke she took off her hat and smoothed her hair. 'I'm blown to pieces. I drove Cornish this morning; he got by everything on the way. He acted like a _premiere danseuse_ when I passed the cooper's shop.'