. . but he never found it again. He
travelled everywhere and died, a disappointed man, at sea."
Mr. Magnus was fond of telling little stories, obscure and
pointless, and Maggie supposed that it was a literary habit. On this
occasion he continued to talk quite naturally for his own
satisfaction. "Yes, one can make oneself believe in anything. I have
believed in all sorts of things. In England, of course, people have
believed in nothing except that things will always be as they always
have been--a useful belief considering that things have never been
as they always were. In the old days, when the Boer War hadn't
interfered with tradition, it must have seemed to any one who wasn't
a young man pretty hopeless, but now I don't know. Imagination's
breaking in . . . Warlock's a prophet. I've got fascinated, sitting
round this Chapel, as badly as any of them. Yes, one can be led into
belief of anything."
"And what do you believe in, Mr. Magnus?" asked Maggie.
"Well, not in myself anyway, nor Thurston, nor Miss Avies . . . But
in your Aunt perhaps, and Warlock. The only thing I'm sure of is
that there's something there, but what it is of course I can't tell
you, and I don't suppose I shall ever know.
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