But Leavitt won't leave it alone. He goes poking into the very crater,
half strangling himself in its poisonous fumes, scorching the shoes
off his feet, and once, I believe, he lost most of his hair and
eyebrows--a narrow squeak. He throws his head back and laughs at any
word of caution. To my notion, it's foolhardy to push a scientific
curiosity to that extreme."
"Is it, then, just scientific curiosity?" mused Miss Stanleigh.
Something in her tone made me stop short. Her eyes had lifted to
mine--almost appealingly, I fancied. Her innocence, her candour, her
warm beauty, which was like a pale phosphorescence in the starlit
darkness--all had their potent effect upon me in that moment. I felt
impelled to a sudden burst of confidence.
"At times I wonder. I've caught a look in his eyes, when he's been
down on his hands and knees, staring into some infernal vent-hole--a
look that is--well, uncanny, as if he were peering into the bowels
of the earth for something quite outside the conceptions of science.
You might think that volcano had worked some spell over him, turned
his mind. He prattles to it or storms at it as if it were a living
creature. Queer, yes; and he's impressive, too, with a sort of
magnetic personality that attracts and repels you violently at the
same time.
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