"It is not that,"--he said, with a little vexation--"When I saw you I recognised you to be a very transparent creature, devoted to innocent dreams which are not life. But that secret which you are reported to possess--the secret of wonderful abounding exhaustless vitality--how does it happen that you have it? I myself see that force expressed in your very glance and gesture, and what puzzles me is that it is not an animal vitality; it is something else."

I was silent.

"You have not a robust physique,"--he went on--"Yet you are more full of the spirit of life than men and women twice as strong as you are.

You are a feminine thing, too,--and that goes against you. But one can see in you a worker--you evidently enjoy the exercise of the accomplishments you possess--and nothing comes amiss to you. I wonder how you manage it? When you joined us on this trip a few days ago, you brought a kind of atmosphere with you that was almost buoyant, and now I am disappointed, because you seem to have enclosed yourself within it, and to have left us out!"

"Have you not left yourselves out?" I queried, gently. "I, personally, have really nothing to do with it. Just remember that when we have talked on any subject above the line of the general and commonplace your sole object has been to 'draw' me for the amus.e.m.e.nt of yourself and Dr. Brayle--"

"Ah, you saw that, did you?" he interrupted, with a faint smile.

"Naturally! Had you believed half you say you were told of me, you would have known I must have seen it. Can you wonder that I refuse to be 'drawn'?"

He looked at me with an odd expression of mingled surprise and annoyance, and I met his gaze fully and frankly. His eyes shifted uneasily away from mine.

"One may feel a pardonable curiosity," he said, "And a desire to know--"

"To know what?" I asked, with some warmth--"How can you obtain what you are secretly craving for, if you persist in denying what is true? You are afraid of death--yet you invite it by ignoring the source of life!

The curtain is down,--you are outside eternal realities altogether in a chaos of your own voluntary creation!"

I spoke with some pa.s.sion, and he heard me patiently.

"Let us try to understand each other," he said, after a pause--"though it will be difficult. You speak of 'eternal realities.' To me there are none, save the constant scattering and re-uniting of atoms. These, so far as we know of the extraordinary (and to me quite unintelligent) plan of the Universe, are for ever shifting and changing into various forms and cl.u.s.ters of forms, such as solar systems, planets, comets, star-dust and the like. Our present view of them is chiefly based on the researches of Larmor and Thomson of Cambridge. From them and other scientists we learn that electricity exists in small particles which we can in a manner see in the 'cathode' rays,--and these particles are called 'electrons.' These compose 'atoms of matter.' Well!--there are a trillion of atoms in each granule of dust,--while electrons are so much smaller, that a hundred thousand of them can lie in the diameter of an atom. I know all this,--but I do not know why the atoms or electrons should exist at all, nor what cause there should be for their constant and often violent state of movement. They apparently always HAVE BEEN, and always WILL be,--therefore they are all that can be called 'eternal realities.' Sir Norman Lockyer tells us that the matter of the Universe is undergoing a continuous process of evolution--but even if it is so, what is that to me individually? It neither helps nor consoles me for being one infinitesimal spark in the general conflagration. Now you believe--"

"In the Force that is BEHIND your system of electrons and atoms"--I said--"For by whatever means or substances the Universe is composed, a mighty Intelligence governs it--and I look to the Cause more than the Effect. For even I am a part of the whole,--I belong to the source of the stream as much as to the stream itself. An abstract, lifeless principle without will or intention or intelligence could not have evolved the splendours of Nature or the intellectual capabilities of man--it could not have given rise to what was not in itself."

He fixed his eyes steadily upon me.

"That last sentence is sound argument," he said, as though reluctantly admitting the obvious,--"And I suppose I am to presume that 'Itself' is the well-spring from which you draw, or imagine you draw, your psychic force?"

"If I have any psychic force at all," I responded,--"where do you suppose it should come from but that which gives vitality to all animate Nature? I cannot understand why you blind yourself to the open and visible fact of a Divine Intelligence working in and through all things. If you could but acknowledge it and set yourself in tune with it you would find life a new and far more dominant joy than it is to you now. I firmly believe that your very illness has arisen from your determined att.i.tude of unbelief."

"That's what a Christian Scientist would say," he answered, with a touch of scorn,--"I begin to think Dr. Brayle is right in his estimate of you."

I held my peace.

"Have you no curiosity?" he demanded--"Don't you want to know his opinion?"

"No,"--and I smiled--"My dear Mr. Harland, with all your experience of the world, has it never occurred to you that there are some people whose opinions don't matter?"

"Brayle is a clever man,"--he said, somewhat testily, "And you are merely an imaginative woman."

"Then why do you trouble about me?" I asked him, quickly--"Why do you want to find out that something in me which baffles both Dr. Brayle and yourself?"

It was now his turn to be silent, and he remained so for some time, his eyes fixed on the shadowing heavens. The waves were roughening slightly and a swell from the Atlantic lifted the 'Diana' curtsying over their foam-flecked crests as she ploughed her way swiftly along. Presently he turned to me with a smile.

"Let us strike a truce!"--he said--"I promise not to try and 'draw' you any more! But please do not isolate yourself from us,--try to feel that we are your friends. I want you to enjoy this trip if possible,--but I fear that we are proving rather dull company for you. We are making for Skye at good speed and shall probably anchor in Loch Scavaig to-night.

To-morrow we might land and do the excursion to Loch Coruisk if you care for that, though Catherine is not a good walker."

I felt rather remorseful as he said these words in a kindly tone. Yet I knew very well that, notwithstanding all the strenuous efforts which might be made by the rules of conventional courtesy, it would be impossible for me to feel quite at home in the surroundings which he had created for himself. I inwardly resolved, however, to make the best of it and to try and steer clear of any possibilities or incidents which might tend to draw the line of demarcation too strongly between us. Some instinct told me that present conditions were not to remain as they were, so I answered my host gently and a.s.sured him of my entire willingness to fall in with any of his plans. Our conversation then gradually drifted into ordinary topics till towards sunset, when I went down to my cabin to dress for dinner. I had a fancy to wear the bunch of pink bell-heather that still kept its fresh and waxen-looking delicacy of bloom, and this, fastened in the lace of my white gown, was my only adornment.

That night there was a distinct attempt on everybody's part to make things sociable and pleasant. Catherine Harland was, for once, quite cheerful and chatty, and proposed that as there was a lovely moonlight, we should all go after dinner into the deck saloon, where there was a piano, and that I should sing for them. I was rather surprised at this suggestion, as she was not fond of music. Nevertheless, there had been such an evident wish shown by her and her father to lighten the monotony which had been creeping like a mental fog over us all that I readily agreed to anything which might perhaps for the moment give them pleasure.

We went up on deck accordingly, and on arriving there were all smitten into awed silence by the wonderful beauty of the scene. We were anch.o.r.ed in Loch Scavaig--and the light of the moon fell with a weird splendour on the gloom of the surrounding hills, a pale beam touching the summits here and there and deepening the solemn effect of the lake and the magnificent forms of its sentinel mountains. A low murmur of hidden streams sounded on the deep stillness and enhanced the fascination of the surrounding landscape, which was more like the landscape of a dream than a reality. The deep breadths of dense darkness lying lost among the cavernous slopes of the hills were broken at intervals by strange rifts of light arising as it were from the palpitating water, which now and again showed gleams of pale emerald and gold phosph.o.r.escence,--the stars looked large and white like straying bits of the moon, and the mysterious 'swishing' of slow ripples heaving against the sides of the yacht suggested the whisperings of uncanny spirits. We stood in a silent group, entranced by the grandeur of the night and by our own loneliness in the midst of it, for there was no sign of a fisherman's hut or boat moored to the sh.o.r.e, or anything which could give us a sense of human companionship.

A curious feeling of disappointment suddenly came over me,--I lifted my eyes to the vast dark sky with a kind of mute appeal--and moon and stars appeared to float up there like ships in a deep sea,--I had expected something more in this strange, almost spectral-looking landscape, and yet I knew not why I should expect anything. Beautiful as the whole scene was, and fully as I recognised its beauty, an overpowering depression suddenly gripped me as with a cold hand,--there was a dreary emptiness in this majestic solitude that seemed to crush my spirit utterly.

I moved a little away from my companions, and leaned over the deck rail, looking far into the black shadows of the sh.o.r.e, defined more deeply by the contrasting brilliance of the moon, and my thoughts flew with undesired swiftness to the darkest line of life's horizon--I had for the moment lost the sense of joy. How wretched all we human creatures are!--I said to my inner self,--what hope after all is there for us, imprisoned in a world which has no pity for us whatever may be our fate,--a world that goes on in precisely the same fashion whether we live or die, work or are idle? These tragic hills, this cold lake, this white moon, were the same when Caesar lived, and would still be the same when we who gazed upon them now were all gone into the Unknown. It seemed difficult to try and realise this obvious fact--so difficult as to be almost unnatural. Supposing that any towns or villages had ever existed on this desolate sh.o.r.e, they had proved useless against the devouring forces of Nature,--just as the splendid buried cities of South America had proved useless in all their magnificence,--useless as the 'Golden Age of Lanka' in Ceylon more than two thousand years ago. Of what avail then is the struggle of human life? Is it for the many or only for the few? Is all the toil and sorrow of millions merely for the uplifting and perfecting of certain individual types, and is this what Christ meant when He said 'Many are called but few are chosen'? If so, why such waste of brain and heart and love and patience? Tears came suddenly into my eyes and I started as from a bad dream when Dr. Brayle approached me softly from behind.

"I am sorry to disturb your reverie!"--he said--"But Miss Harland has gone into the deck saloon and we are all waiting to hear you sing."

I looked up at him.

"I don't feel as if I could sing to-night,"--I replied, rather tremulously--"This lonely landscape depresses me--"

He saw that my eyes were wet, and smiled.

"You are overwrought," he said--"Your own theories of health and vitality are not infallible! You must be taken care of. You think too much."

"Or too little?" I suggested.

"Really, my dear lady, you cannot possibly think too little where health and happiness are concerned! The sanest and most comfortable people on earth are those who eat well and never think at all. An empty brain and a full stomach make the sum total of a contented life."

"So YOU imagine!" I said, with a slight gesture of veiled contempt.

"So I KNOW!" he answered, with emphasis--"And I have had a wide experience. Now don't look daggers at me!--come and sing!"

He offered me his arm, but I put it aside and walked by myself towards the deck saloon. Mr. Harland and Catherine were seated there, with all the lights turned full on, so that the radiance of the moon through the window was completely eclipsed. The piano was open. As I came in Catherine looked at me with a surprised air.

"Why, how pale you are!" she exclaimed--"One would think you had seen a ghost!"

I laughed.

"Perhaps I have! Loch Scavaig is sufficient setting for any amount of ghosts. It's such a lonely place,"--and a slight tremor ran through me as I played a few soft chords--"What shall I sing to you?"

"Something of the country we are in,"--said Mr. Harland--"Don't you know any of those old wild Gaelic airs?"

I thought a moment, and then to a low rippling accompaniment I sang the old Celtic 'Fairy's Love Song'--

"Why should I sit and sigh, Pu'in' bracken, pu'in' bracken, Why should I sit and sigh, On the hill-side dreary-- When I see the plover rising, Or the curlew wheeling, Then I know my mortal lover Back to me is stealing.

When the day wears away Sad I look adown the valley, Every sound heard around Sets my heart a-thrilling,-- Why should I sit and sigh, Pu'in' bracken, pu'in' bracken, Why should I sit and sigh All alone and weary!

Ah, but there is something wanting, Oh but I am weary!

Come, my true and tender lover, O'er the hills to cheer me!

Why should I sit and sigh, Pu'in' bracken, pu'in' bracken, Why should I sit and sigh, All alone and weary!"

I had scarcely finished the last verse when Captain Derrick suddenly appeared at the door of the saloon in a great state of excitement.

"Come out, Mr. Harland!" he almost shouted--"Come quickly, all of you!