Mr. Ember, having completed all his arrangements, went in search of Lady Heritage. She had sat silently through lunch and disappeared directly afterwards. Having failed to find her downstairs, Ember was about to pass along the upper corridor to the steel gate which shut off the north wing, when he noticed that the door of the small Oak Room on his left was ajar. He thought he heard a movement within, and, after pausing for a moment to listen, he pushed the door wide and looked in. As far as his knowledge went, Lady Heritage had never entered this room during the time that they had been in the house. He accepted the fact and could have stated the reasons for it. It had been the playroom, and the walls were covered with Anthony Luttrell’s school groups. The book shelves held his books, the cabinets his collections. In a very intimate sense it was his room.  
 
Raymond Heritage stood at the far end of it now. She wore a dress of soft white wool bound with a plaited girdle from the ends of which heavy swung. She had taken one of the groups from the wall and was looking at it with an which closed her thought to all other impressions. She stood half turned from the door. Ember looked at her and, looking, experienced some strange sensations. This was Raymond Carr-Magnus, a younger, softer, lovelier woman than Raymond Heritage. The curious cold something, like glass or very thin ice, which seemed to wall her from her fellows, was gone. It was as if the ice had dissolved leaving the air and tremulous.
 
The little flame which always burned in him took on brightness and intensity, and a second flame sprang up beside it, a flame that burned to a still white heat of anger because this change, this , was for Anthony Luttrell and not for Jeffrey Ember.
 
There was no sign of emotion, however, in face or expression as he moved slightly and said:
 
“Are you busy? May I speak to you for a few minutes?”
 
It was characteristic of Raymond that she did not appear in the least startled. She turned quite slowly, laid the photograph on the open front of the bureau by which she stood, and said:
 
“Now? Do you want me now?” A softness was in her voice as she , and a dream in her eyes.
 
Her beauty struck Ember as a thing seen for the first time. He had to use great force to keep his answer on a note of .
 
“If you can spare the time,” he said.
 
Raymond looked round her. There was a quality in her glance.
 
“Yes; I’ll come downstairs,” she said.
 
This was Anthony’s room. She would not talk to another man in Anthony’s room. The thought may have been in her mind. The breath of it beat on Ember’s flames and fanned them higher still. He led the way downstairs and into Sir William’s study.
 
 
Raymond Heritage had passed from the despairing mood of her first interview with Anthony. Then to know him alive and to feel him unforgiving had stabbed her to the quick. But that phase had passed. During the many hours that she had spent alone the one amazing radiant thought that he was alive had come to dominate everything. The cold finality of death had been lifted. Instead of a blank wall, there opened before her an infinite number of ways, any one of which might lead her back to her lost happiness. She began to live in the past, to go over the old times, to make a dream her companion.
 
She came into the study with Ember and waited to hear what he wanted, giving him just that surface attention which he recognised and resented. His first words were meant to startle her.
 
“Lady Heritage,” he said, “you know, of course, that there are certain passages and rooms under this house?”
 
She did start a little, he thought. Certainly her attention deepened.
 
“Who told you that, Jeffrey?” she said, and hardly heard her own voice because Anthony’s rang in her ears insisting, “I know that you told Ember.”
 
“Mr. Luttrell told me,” said Ember.
 
She exclaimed incredulously. At least her thoughts were not wandering now. Ember felt a certain triumph as he realised it. He went on speaking quite quietly:
 
 
“It was when Sir William and I were down here the year before Mr. Luttrell died. He, Mr. Luttrell, was taken very ill and I sat up with him. In the night he was . It was obvious that he had something on his mind. He began to talk about the passages and to say that the secret must not be lost. He took me for his nephew Henry March, and nothing would serve him but he must show me the entrance in the hall. He got out of bed, and was so much excited that I thought it best to give way. When he had shown me the spring he calmed down and went quietly back to bed. In the morning he had forgotten all about it.”
 
Raymond listened, frowning.
 
“Why do you tell me this?” she said. “I knew Mr. Luttrell had told Henry.”
 
“Henry March knows?” said Ember.
 
“Yes, I think so. Yes, I’m sure he does. Why, Jeffrey?”
 
Ember was too busy with his thoughts to speak for a moment. What an risk they had run. If Henry March knew of the passages, then they had been on the very of the abyss all along. He spoke at last, very seriously:
 
“I want you to come down with me into the passages if you will. There’s something I want to show you—something which I think you ought to know.”
 
“Something wrong?”
 
“I think you ought to see for yourself. I’d rather not say any more if you don’t mind. I’ll show you what I mean. I really think you ought to come and see for yourself. This is a good time, as the servants are safely out of the way and Miss Molloy seems to have taken herself off.”
 
“Very well, I’ll come. I must get a cloak though, or I shall get into such a mess. Those passages simply cover one with slime.”
 
Ember stood still with his hand on the half-opened door.
 
 
“You’ve been down there?”
 
“Why, yes, once or twice.”
 
“Lately?” His voice was rather low.
 
“Yes, quite lately.”
 
Ember gripped the door.
 
“And how did you know—oh, I beg your pardon.”
 
“Yes, I don’t think we need go into that.” She spoke gently but from a distance. As she spoke she passed him and went through the hall and up the stairs. The heavy tassels of her girdle knocked softly against each shallow step.
 
Ember went on gripping the door until she came down again wrapped in a long black cloak. When he dropped his hand there was a red incised line across the palm. He saw that the cloak was with green. How near to the edge they had been, how horribly near!
 
He opened the door and lighted her down the steps in silence, and in silence walked as far as the laboratory turning. When he turned to the left and flashed his light ahead of them, Raymond spoke:
 
“I’ve never been along that passage,” she said. “I know there are holes in some of them, and I’ve never liked the look of these side tunnels.”
 
“This one’s quite safe,” said Ember, and led the way.
 
Jane heard the of their voices, and for a moment saw the faint glow of the light. Then the glow and the voices died again. It was dark, she was alone, she was cold, she wanted Henry, oh, how she wanted Henry.
 
 
At that moment Jane’s idea of Paradise was to be able to put her head down on Henry’s shoulder and cry. It was not, perhaps, a very idea, but it was very .
 
When Ember switched on the light, swung open the steel gate, and stood aside for her to pass, Lady Heritage uttered a sharp .
 
“Jeffrey, what’s this?” she said.
 
“That is what I wanted you to see,” replied Ember.
 
She crossed the threshold, walked a pace or two into the room, and looked around her with eyes from which all dreaminess had vanished. Bewilderment took its place.
 
“Who did this? What does it mean?” she asked.
 
Ember did not answer her until he too was within the . He pushed the steel gate with his hand and it fell to with a clang.
 
“It is, as you see, a well-equipped laboratory,” he said—“worth coming to see, I think.”
 
“Yes, but, Jeffrey——”
 
“You are interested? I thought you would be; won’t you sit down?”
 
She looked about her with puzzled eyes.
 
“Do sit,” said Ember in his quiet, friendly way. “You will find this chair more comfortable than the benches.”
 
He brought it forward as he spoke—a high-backed chair with arms. It struck her then as a curious piece of furniture to find in a laboratory.
 
“Brought here on purpose for you,” said Ember.
 
But Raymond did not sit. Instead she rested her hands lightly on the back of the chair, and, looking across it, said:
 
“Jeffrey, what does all this mean?”
 
 
“I’m going to tell you,” said Ember seriously. “I have brought you here to tell you, only I wish you would sit down.”
 
“No, thank you. Jeffrey, what is this place?”
 
“A laboratory,” said Ember. “As you see, a laboratory, and the scene of some extremely interesting experiments.”
 
“Carried out by you?”
 
“Carried out by me ... and some others.”
 
“You have brought other people in here? Jeffrey, I think that was inexcusable.”
 
“I have not yet attempted to excuse myself.”
 
For a moment his eyes met hers. She saw something, a spark, a flash, from the flames within. It was her first hint that there was, or could be, a flame there at all. It startled her in just the same degree that an actual spark her flesh would have startled her—not more.
 
He spoke again at once.
 
“Just now I called this place a laboratory. If I were a poet”—he laughed easily—“I might have used another word. I might have said, ‘This is the out of which has come the new Philosopher’s Stone.’”
 
Raymond lifted her .
 
“You’ve not been touched by that mediæval dream?” she said. “This is the twentieth century, Jeffrey.”
 
“Yes,” said Ember slowly. “Yes, the twentieth century, and I said ... ‘a new Philosopher’s Stone.’ The mediæval alchemists dreamed of something that would turn all it touched to gold, that would the baser metals. I have found something which will touch this base , this rotten with which we have surrounded ourselves, and dissolve it. And when it is in solution there will be gold and to spare.”
 
 
“What do you mean?” said Lady ............