Sax Rohmer

her features some of the quality of a delicate ivory mask. Except for superciliously curved lips, her face could not be said to bear any expression whatever.
She was beautiful, but unapproachable.

I anticipate that we shall be reported once more as a 'flying saucer'.

He found himself looking out into a dimly illuminated place which resembled Aladdin's cave. It was the warehouse referred to by Police Captain Rafferty.

Piled upon the floor wete rugs and carpets of Kermanshah, of Khorassan, of the looms of China.

My father," she continued quietly, "has always known that the old alchemists were wrong only in one vital particular. Whilst it is impracticable to transmute base metal to gold, it is practicable to transmute gold to base metal. For many years he carried out experiments with a Runsen beam. The Riinsen beam, as you may be aware, is a kind of super X-ray."

"He was suspected of Fascist sympathies at one time. He's a celebrated racing motorist. And he's married to an American wife with a home not fifty miles from Fort Knox. Anyway, he's in the bag."

You think so, DeniSy-you think so. To yourself, you are an old man, because there is silver in your hair. To me you are the dream-man of my life — because I could never make you love me. You are strong, inflexible. So am I. In the service of the Si-Fan, failure is not permitted. Excuses are not listened to. I have failed — and I dare not go back."

"I mean that I want to come with you! Oh, God! Take me away with you, away from all this — anywhere, anywhere! All I know of the Si-Fan I will tell you. I will bring a flame of passion into your cold, lonely life that will alter the face of the world. Take me with you!"

Don't you think science is going too far? Isn't it upsetting the balance of nature? Science creates horrible things, and art creates beauty."

His mood was an odd one, an unhappy one. He had succeeded in his chosen profession, had earned the respect of older scientists, whose accomplishments he revered. His researches had won him wide recognition. Yet tonight he wished he had chosen to be a painter; he longed to escape from his accepted self, to be his natural self. He was still young, and there was a world outside the world of science, a world in which there remained room for romance, for beauty.