"The real truth"--he looked at her suddenly with a tender, most charming smile that took away his ugliness. "Ah, that's a tremendous question. Part of the truth is that Warlock's been praying so much and eating so little that it would be odd indeed if he didn't see visions of some sort. And part of the truth is that there are a lot of women in the world who'll believe simply anything that you tell them. It's part of the truth, too, that there are scoundrels in the world who will take advantage of anybody's simple trust to fill their pockets. But that's not all," he went on, shaking his head, "no, that's not all. It's part of the truth that there is a mystery, and that human beings will go on searching whatever all the materialists and merchants in the world can try to do to stop them. I remember years ago an old man, a little off his dot, telling my father that he, the old man, was a treasure hunter. He told my father that the world was divided into two halves, the treasure hunters and the Town Councillors, and that the two halves would never join and never even meet. My father, who was a practical man, said that the old idiot should be shut up in an asylum, and eventually I believe he was. 'We'll have him going off one day,' my father said, 'in a cargo boat with a map in his pocket, looking for gold pieces.' But it wasn't gold pieces he was after." To Maggie it was always irritating the way that Mr. Magnus would wander away from the subject. She brought him back now with a jerk. "No, but what do you think is going to happen?" she asked him. "I don't know," he answered. "I can't tell, but I know all my happiness here is coming to an end, and I don't know what I shall do. If I were a strong man I would go out and find all the other treasure hunters, all the vicious ones, and the diseased, and the drunkards and the perverted, and I would try to found some kind of a society so that they should recognise one another all the world over and shouldn't feel so lonely and deserted and hopelessly done for. I don't mean a society for improving them, mind you, or warning them or telling them they'll go to prison if they don't do better, that's none of my business. But it seems to be a solemn fact that you aren't a treasure hunter until there's something wrong with you, until you've got a sin that's stronger than you are, or until you've done something that's disgraceful in the eyes of the world--not that I believe in weakness or in giving way to things. No one admires the strong and the brave more than I do. I think a man's a fool if he doesn't fight as hard as he can. But there's a brotherhood of the dissatisfied and the uneasy and the anxious-hearted, and I believe it's they who will discover the Grail in the end if it's ever going to be discovered at all."