"Oh, dear, yes!" she smiled back at him. "It lends itself so easily to fraud that the temptation among the little people must be overwhelming--the more because trickery is often more accurate than real revelation. I will confess to you that this is the rock upon which my powers and my mission seem sometimes most likely to split. But I console myself by thinking that all of us, great as well as small, must be on the verge of it sometimes. Let me draw you a parallel. Perhaps you know something of the old alchemists. They had laid hold on the edge of chemistry. But because that truth came confused, because they all had things by the wrong handle, a thousand of them confused truth with error until, in the end, they did not know right from wrong. This force in which you and I are interested is a little like chemistry--it may be called mental and spiritual chemistry. But because it deals with the unseen, not with the seen, it is a thousand times more uncertain and baffling. We have ears, eyes, touch--a great equipment--to perceive gold, silver, stones, trees, water. But we have only this mind, a mystery even to ourselves, to perceive an idea, a concept. I wish that I could express it better"--she broke off suddenly--"and very likely I'm boring you--but when your whole soul is full of a thing it _will_ overflow." She smiled upon Norcross, as though for sympathy. If he gave it, his face did not betray him. "Then you say," returned Norcross with one of his characteristic shifts to childlike abruptness, "that you never faked?" Mrs. Markham, as though daring him to provoke her by his forthrightness, leaned forward and regarded him with amusement on her lips. "Men are only boys," she said. "My dear sir--I could almost say 'my dear boy'--if I had, would I admit it? You must take me as I am and form your own conclusions. I shall not help you with that, even though I admit to you that I don't care very much what your conclusions are. "To be serious," she added, "it is not a pleasant suspicion to hear of one's self. Now take yourself--you are a man of large practical affairs--" Norcross leaned forward a trifle, as though expecting revelation to begin. She caught the motion. "Don't think I'm telling you _that_ from any supernormal source," she said. "That's my own intelligence--my woman's intuition if you like to call it so. Your air, your ineptness to understand philosophy, show that you are not in one of the learned professions, and it is easy to see, if I may make so bold"--here she smiled a trifle--"that you are no ordinary person. You have the air of great things about you. Well, if I should raise suspicion against your business integrity and your methods, it would hurt for a moment, even if there were truth in it. In fairness, that is so, is it not?" "I have to beg your pardon, of course," said Norcross, grown easier in his manner. "But you must remember that your profession has to prove itself--that they're all accused of fraud."