“Dear child,” he interrupted gently, “what did Chinese Gordon or Sir Robert Hart, or even my comrade Barres, or I myself know about occult Asia in comparison to what you know?—a girl who has actually served the mysteries of Erlik for four amazing years!” She paled a trifle, came slowly across the room to where Recklow was seated, laid a timid hand on his sleeve. “Do you believe there are sorcerers in Asia?” she asked with that child-like directness which her wonderful blue eyes corroborated. Recklow remained silent. “Because,” she went on, “if, in your heart, you do not believe this to be an accursed fact, then what I have to say will mean nothing to any of you.” Recklow touched his short, silvery moustache, hesitating. Then: “The worship of Erlik is devil worship,” he said. “Also I am entirely prepared to believe that there are, among the Yezidees, adepts who employ scientific weapons against civilisation—who have probably obtained a rather terrifying knowledge of psychic laws which they use scientifically, and which to ordinary, God-fearing folk appear to be the black magic of sorcerers.” Cleves said: “The employment by the huns of poison gases and long-range cannon is a parallel case. Before the war we could not believe in the possibility of a cannon that threw shells a distance of seventy miles.” The girl still addressed herself to Recklow: “Then you do not believe there are real sorcerers in Asia, Mr. Recklow?” “Not sorcerers with supernatural powers for evil. Only degenerate human beings who, somehow, have managed to tap invisible psychic currents, and have learned how to use terrific forces about which, so far, we know practically nothing.” She spoke again in the same uneasy voice: “Then you do not believe that either God or Satan is involved?” “No,” he replied smilingly, “and you must not so believe.” “Nor the—the destruction of human souls,” she persisted; “you do not believe it is being accomplished to-day?” “Not in the slightest, dear young lady,” he said cheerfully. “Do you not believe that to have been instructed in such unlawful knowledge is damning? Do you not believe that ability to employ unknown forces is forbidden of God, and that to disobey His law means death to the soul?” “No!” “That it is the price one pays to Satan for occult power over people’s minds?” she insisted. “Hypnotic suggestion is not one of the cardinal sins,” explained Recklow, still smiling—“unless wickedly employed. The Yezidee priesthood is a band of so-called sorcerers only because of their wicked employment of whatever hypnotic and psychic knowledge they may have obtained. “There was nothing intrinsically wicked in the huns’ discovery of phosgene. But the use they made of it made devils out of them. My ability to manufacture phosgene gas is no crime. But if I manufacture it and use it to poison innocent human beings, then, in that sense, I am, perhaps, a sort of modern sorcerer.” Tressa Norne turned paler: