"True, Paul, there are none to hinder us," she replied seriously, "that is, no one but--but--"

She paused, not knowing how to proceed.

"Then there is some one," cried Paul earnestly. "I thought as much.

Who might the gentleman be?"

"Yourself!" exclaimed Dorothy, her eyes still fixed upon the ground.

"Myself!" shouted he in amazement. "Do you mean to say that I should oppose my own marriage with the girl I love?"

"You might," she answered demurely, casting a side glance up at him, and allowing the very faintest, saddest kind of smile to rest for an instant upon her face.

"Well!" said Paul, "I do not suppose you will explain what you mean, but it would be only natural that I should like to know."

"I only mean," she replied, resuming her meditative att.i.tude, "that you do not know me; that you neither know who nor what I am. If I did not love you, I might deceive and entrap you, but not under the circ.u.mstances."

Later they returned to the house.

7

It was not until Mr. Henley had made another and longer visit to the dark room that he became convinced beyond all doubt that the work of sealing up the place had been done from within, and that there was, and had been, no other outlet but that through which he had entered.

To suppose that the main wall of the house had been closed in at a later period would be preposterous, and for manifest reasons. His examination of the room's interior had been most thorough and exhaustive. The place was smoothly plastered upon the inside, and even the mason's trowel had been found upon the floor within, so that it became at once evident that those who had done the work had been self-immured. Although the reason for such an act was utterly beyond his comprehension, Paul felt a certain satisfaction in having reached this conclusion, as it showed the impossibility of Dorothy's being in any way implicated in the affair. It seemed even possible that she was ignorant of it. But this discovery in no wise lessened the mystery; it rather increased it.

A few evenings after Paul's decision regarding the self-immurement of those discovered in the vault, he and Ah Ben were again enjoying their pipes by the great fireplace in the hall. The elder man was generally disposed to conversation at this hour; and after Dorothy had retired, Paul alluded to the strange scene he had witnessed through the chimney, and expressed a desire to learn something of occultism. Taking his long-stemmed pipe from his lips, the old man gazed earnestly into the fire. He seemed to be thinking of what to say, and to be drawing inspiration from the glowing embers and dancing flames before him. At last he spoke:

"Occultism, Mr. Henley, is difficult--nay, almost impossible--to explain to a layman; or if explained, remains incomprehensible; and yet a child may acquire its secrets by its individual efforts.

Spiritual power comes to those who seek it in proper mood, but, injudiciously exercised, may cause insanity."

"Nevertheless," urged Paul, "if you won't consider me a trifler, I should like to see a further manifestation of the power."

Ah Ben looked at him compa.s.sionately.

"Pardon me, Mr. Henley," he said, "but it is not always well to gratify our curiosity upon such a subject; but if you seriously wish it, and can believe in me as an honest and honorable custodian of the power, and will prepare yourself for a serious mental shock, I will show you something."

"Before proceeding," said Paul, "I should like to ask you a question.

Was the room I saw through the chimney a real room? I mean had it any material existence upon earth?"

"Most a.s.suredly. It was a scene in my early childhood, and originated in the Valley of the Jhelum, in the Punjab. The officer and lady were my parents. It was the last time I ever saw them. I was the boy."

"May I ask how it is possible to reproduce a scene so long pa.s.sed out of existence, and which took place so many thousand miles away?"

"Easily told, but not so easily understood by one whose mind has never been trained to think in these occult channels," answered the elder man; "for to understand the thing at all, you must first divest your mind of time and s.p.a.ce as outside ent.i.ties, for these are in reality but modes of thought, and have only such value as we give them. India, doubtless, seems very far to you, but to one whose powers of will have been sufficiently developed, it is no farther than the wall of this room. So it is with time. How can we see that which no longer exists? But a little reflection will show us that even on the physical plane we see that which does not exist every day of our lives. Look at the stars. The light by which some of them are recognized has been millions of years in transit, so that we do not behold them as they are tonight, but as they were at that remote period of time; meanwhile they may have been wrecked and scattered in meteoric dust."

"But that is hardly an explanation of the scene referred to,"

answered Paul. "Whenever I direct my eyes in the right quarter, the stars are visible; whether they be actually there or not, they are there to me; but not so with the vision of the room. In my normal condition there is no room there, while in my normal condition the stars are always there."

"True, and because your normal condition is sympathetically attuned to the vibrations of starlight. Your consciousness is located in your brain, and so long as those vibrations continue to strike with sufficient force upon the optic nerve, you will be conscious of the light. But suppose the machinery of your body were finer--suppose your senses were absolutely in accord with those vibratory movements, instead of only partially so--do you not know that the starlight would reveal far more than it now does? Then you would see not only the light, but the scenes that are carried in the light, but which by reason of their obtuseness can not penetrate your senses. Were this improvement in men really achieved, our conceptions of time and s.p.a.ce would be modified, and the condition of other worlds as plainly seen as our own."

"Yes," said Paul, determined to follow up the original question, "but what of a scene that occurred in this world some years ago, and whose light vibrations would require but the fraction of a second to reach our point of consciousness--no matter where situated on earth--and which vibrations have long since pa.s.sed beyond the reach of man, and been lost in infinite s.p.a.ce?"

"Nothing is ever lost, and infinite s.p.a.ce is but a phase of infinite mind. All that is necessary to review such a picture is to change our point of consciousness from the brain to a point in s.p.a.ce or _mind_, where the vibratory movement is still in progress. In other words, to overtake the scene by transposing our consciousness. Granted these powers, which are born of the soul, and we may behold any event in history with the clearness of its original force. Man is mind, and mind is one; but all mind is not self-conscious. The consciousness of mind is in spots, as it were, and here its consciousness is fixed in a spot called brain, where with most men it remains until the will, or some abnormal condition or the event called death, liberates it from its prison. You believe that with your G.o.d, the scenes of yesterday, to-day, and forever are alike visible?"

"Even admitting all that you say," answered Paul, "I can not see how it was that I, who have no such power, could see clearly an event in your life."

"Again the power of sympathetic vibration. The scene was reflected from my mind to yours."

"But you just now said there was but one mind."

"Perhaps then it would be more correct to say, from my point of consciousness to yours; or, to be still more accurate, to say that the intensity of my thoughts struck a sympathetic chord in yours, and vibrated through you as one consciousness. Without undue familiarity, Mr. Henley, I have found in you a responsive temperament. There are few men I can not influence, and with some the effort is trifling."

Paul was interested, and sat quietly reflecting upon what he had heard. Naturally the ideas were not so clear as they would have been had he given more thought to the conditions of spirituality, which for so many years had been a part of Ah Ben's existence, and which state was as familiar to him as the body in which he appeared. Time and reflection alone, as this strange man had declared, could bring one to comprehend and realize a condition of existence so totally differing from that of our material plane. The inability of language to express that of which we have no parallel, and of which we can not conceive, is a grave obstacle to our understanding; but the man was ever ready to exert himself to make the matter clear when he found his listener interested.

"If I am not tiring you," continued Paul, "I should like to call your attention to another point. You said that nothing was absolute; that all was relative; and yet when it comes to fixed measures, I think you must admit that this is not so. For example, a mile is a mile, and a mile must always be a mile under every conceivable condition.

Am I not right?"

"At first thought it would seem so," answered Ah Ben. "A mile certainly appears to be an absolute unchanging quant.i.ty of so many feet, which must always and under every circ.u.mstance affect us in the same way; and yet a little reflection will show that this can not be so, and that a mile, after all, is only fixed so long as our mind is fixed. In other words, it is a mental conception, and relative to other mental conceptions. Let us, for example, suppose that the world and all its contents, and, in fact, the entire universe, were exactly twice as large as it is, the mile would then be twice as long as it is now; and that which we _now_ call a mile would only make the impression of half as much distance as it now does. And so with all material conditions; I say _material_, for in the spiritual life we see these things more truly as they are, and not as they appear.

There is but one cla.s.s of facts which is absolute. I speak of the emotions. These are the realities of life--the soul qualities. Could we measure _love_, _hate_, or _happiness_, the standard would be fixed."

"Do not forget your promise to show me something more of your power in the region of occultism," said Henley, "for I am greatly interested."

"I will keep my word, but I warn you to prepare for a shock!"

"I am ready, and should like nothing better than to witness an example of your greatest power!"

The old man looked solemn, and then slowly answered:

"You shall be gratified. It is now past midnight. Dorothy is asleep, and it is a fitting time. If you will follow me to my own room, I will show you a mystery."

For a moment Paul hesitated. The thought of following this strange man at such an hour into the realm of the unknown, to investigate the supernatural, was uncanny, and he half wished he had not made the request. He knew the man to be no trifler. That which he promised, he would surely perform. Then, procuring a candle, Ah Ben led the way.

They walked along the narrow pa.s.sage at the rear, Ah Ben stopping to close the door quietly behind them. They then mounted a still narrower stairway at the back, Paul following closely. Presently they entered a pa.s.sage which led in the opposite direction from Henley's bedchamber, and then, turning sharply to the right, found a narrow hallway which terminated in a door. Here the men stopped.

"I am going to take you into my sanctum, and you must not be surprised if you find things different from the ordinary. The circ.u.mstances of my life have set me apart from most men; and if my surroundings are at variance with theirs, you must set it down to these facts."

Here he opened the door.

The room was lighted with the same lamp that Paul had seen through the chimney. There were odd-looking things, such as a skeleton with artificial eyes; a gla.s.s manikin with a reddish fluid that meandered through his body in thread-like streams; a horoscope and a globe, suspended from the ceiling, with the signs of the Zodiac. Various old parchments, covered with quaint cabalistic figures, were tacked against the walls. In a cabinet, embellished with hieroglyphics, stood another human form, a mummy wonderfully preserved.

"Here we are alone," said Ah Ben; "it is the quietest hour of the night, and therefore we are least apt to be disturbed."

"And what do you propose?" asked Paul with a misgiving he was loth to admit.

"Whatever you may desire, Mr. Henley; for you must know that which is born of spirit is not subject to the restrictions of matter. But remember that all is natural; there is no supernatural, and therefore no cause for alarm."

Ah Ben led the way to the window, and having drawn aside the curtain, threw up the sash. To Henley's amazement they walked directly through the open cas.e.m.e.nt and found themselves upon a broad stone terrace in the glaring light of day. Beneath them lay a city of marvelous beauty, whose streets were lined with palaces, surrounded by their own parks, and whose inhabitants were walking in and about the shaded thoroughfares, or resting in the public seats beside them. The change was so sudden, so bewildering, that Paul drew back, his hand pressed against his head; whereupon Ah Ben took him by the arm and said: