“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.”

“Now that you have apologized,” said she, “I will prove that I have accepted the apology by answering you direct.  I am not a fraud.  I have been able to afford not to be.  Still, I have a little sympathy with those who are.  Did you ever consider,” she went on, “that no fraud invents anything; that he is only imitating something genuine?  Perhaps it may shake whatever faith you have in me if I tell you whatever these people profess to do has been done genuinely and without possibility of fraud.”

“Even bringing spirits from a cabinet?” he asked.  Just as he spoke that question, an electric bell rang somewhere to the rear of the drawing-room.  Mrs. Markham sat unmoving for an instant, as though considering either the sound or his question.  The bell tinkled no more.  After a moment, she smiled again.

“You must know more of all these things before I can answer your question.  Haven’t we talked enough?  Wouldn’t it be better, in your present condition of suspicion, if I try to see what we can do without seeming any further to inspect you?  For you must know that long preliminary conversation is a stock method with frauds and fakirs.”

Norcross’s breath came a little faster, and a curious change passed for a second over his face—­a falling of all the masses and lines.  Mrs. Markham rose, sat by the table, under the reading-lamp, and shaded her eyes with her hand.  She spoke now in a different tone, softer and less inflected.