Sailing, sailing! Whither?

To the glittering rainbow strand Of Love's enchanted land?

We ask not where In earth or air, So long as we sail together!

Sailing, sailing! Whither?

On to the life divine,-- Your soul made one with mine!

In Heaven or h.e.l.l All must be well, So long as we sail together!

The song finished with a pa.s.sionate chord which, played as it was with swift intensity, seemed to awaken a response from the sea,--at any rate a strange shivering echo trembled upward as it were from the water and floated into the s.p.a.cious silence of the night. My heart beat with uncomfortable quickness and my eyes grew hot with the weight of suppressed tears;--why could I not escape from the cruel, restraining force that held my real self prisoner as with manacles of steel? I could not even speak; and while the others were clapping their hands in delighted applause at the beauty of both voice and song, I sat silent.

"He sings well!" said Santoris--"He is the Eastern lad you saw when you came on deck this morning. I brought him from Egypt. He will give us another song presently. Shall we walk a little?"

We rose and paced the deck slowly, gradually dividing in couples, Catherine and Dr. Brayle--Mr. Harland and his secretary,--Santoris and myself. We two paused together at the stern of the vessel looking towards the bowsprit, which seemed to pierce the distance of sea and sky like a flying arrow.

"You wish to speak to me alone," said Santoris, then--"Do you not?

Though I know what you want to say!"

I glanced at him with a touch of defiance.

"Then I need not speak," I answered.

"No, you need not speak, unless you give utterance to what is in your true soul," he said--"I would rather you did not play at conventions with me."

For the moment I felt almost angry.

"I do not play at conventions," I murmured.

"Oh, do you not? Is that quite candid?"

I raised my eyes and met his,--he was smiling. Some of the oppression in my soul suddenly gave way, and I spoke hurriedly in a low tone.

"Surely you know how difficult it is for me?" I said. "Things have happened so strangely,--and we are surrounded here by influences that compel conventionality. I cannot speak to you as frankly as I would under other circ.u.mstances. It is easy for YOU to be yourself;--you have gained the mastery over all lesser forces than your own. But with me it is different--perhaps when I am away I shall be able to think more calmly--"

"You are going away?" he asked, gently.

"Yes. It is better so."

He remained silent. I went on, quickly.

"I am going away because I feel inadequate and unable to cope with my present surroundings. I have had some experience of the same influences before--I know I have--"

"I also!" he interrupted.

"Well, you must realise this better than I," and I looked at him now with greater courage--"and if you have, you know they have led to trouble. I want you to help me."

"I? To help you?" he said. "How can I help you when you leave me?"

There was something infinitely sad in his voice,--and the old fear came over me like a chill--'lest I should lose what I had gained!'

"If I leave you," I said, tremblingly--"I do so because I am not worthy to be with you! Oh, can you not see this in me?" For as I spoke he took my hand in his and held it with a kindly clasp--"I am so self-willed, so proud, so unworthy! There are a thousand things I would say to you, but I dare not--not here, or now!"

"No one will approach us," he said, still holding my hand--"I am keeping the others, unconsciously to themselves, at a distance till you have finished speaking. Tell me some of these thousand things!"

I looked up at him and saw the deep l.u.s.tre of his eyes filled with a great tenderness. He drew me a little closer to his side.

"Tell me," he persisted, softly--"Is there very much that we do not, if we are true to each other, know already?"

"YOU know more than I do!" I answered--"And I want to be equal with you! I do! I cannot be content to feel that I am groping in the dark weakly and blindly while you are in the light, strong and self-contained! You can help me--and you WILL help me! You will tell me where I should go and study as you did with Aselzion!"

He started back, amazed.

"With Aselzion! Dear, forgive me! You are a woman! It is impossible that you should suffer so great an ordeal,--so severe a strain! And why should you attempt it? If you would let me, I would be sufficient for you." "But I will not let you!" I said, quickly, roused to a kind of defiant energy--"I wish to go to the very source of your instruction, and then I shall see where I stand with regard to you! If I stay here now--"

"It will be the same old story over again!" he said--"Love--and mistrust! Then drifting apart in the same weary way! Is it not possible to avoid the errors of the past?"

"No!" I said, resolutely--"For me it is not possible! I cannot yield to my own inward promptings. They offer me too much happiness! I doubt the joy,--I fear the glory!"

My voice trembled--the very clasp of his hand unnerved me.

"I will tell you," he said, after a brief pause, "what you feel. You are perfectly conscious that between you and myself there is a tie which no power, earthly or heavenly, can break,--but you are living in a matter-of-fact world with matter-of-fact persons, and the influence they exert is to make you incredulous of the very truths which are an essential part of your spiritual existence. I understand all this. I understand also why you wish to go to the House of Aselzion, and you shall go--"

I uttered an exclamation of relief and pleasure. His eyes grew dark with earnest gravity as he looked at me.

"You are pleased at what you cannot realise," he said, slowly--"If you go to the House of Aselzion--and I see you are determined--it will be a matter of such vital import that it can only mean one of two things,--your entire happiness or your entire misery. I cannot contemplate with absolute calmness the risk you run,--and yet it is better that you should follow the dictates of your own soul than be as you are now--irresolute,--uncertain of yourself and ready to lose all you have gained!"

'To lose all I have gained.' The old insidious terror! I met his searching gaze imploringly.

"I must not lose anything!" I said, and my voice sank lower,--"I cannot bear--to lose YOU!"

His hand closed on mine with a tighter grasp.

"Yet you doubt!" he said, softly.

"I must KNOW!" I said, resolutely.

He lifted his head with a proud gesture that was curiously familiar to me.

"So the old spirit is not dead in you, my queen," he said, smiling.

"The old indomitable will!--the desire to probe to the very centre of things! Yet love defies a.n.a.lysis,--and is the only thing that binds the Universe together. A fact beyond all proving--a truth which cannot be expounded by any given rule or line but which is the most emphatic force of life! My queen, it is a force that must either bend or break you!"

I made no reply. He still held my hand, and we looked out together on the shining expanse of the sea where there was no vessel visible and where our schooner alone flew over the watery, moonlit surface like a winged flame.

"In your working life," he continued, gently, "you have done much. You have thought clearly, and you have not been frightened away from any eternal fact by the difficulties of research. But in your living life you have missed more than you will care to know. You have been content to remain a pa.s.sive recipient of influences--you have not thoroughly learned how to combine and use them. You have overcome altogether what are generally the chief obstacles in the way of a woman's higher progress,--her inherent childishness--her delight in imagining herself wronged or neglected,--her absurd way of attaching weighty importance to the merest trifles--her want of balance, and the foolish resentment she feels at being told any of her faults,--this is all past in you, and you stand free of the shackles of sheer stupidity which makes so many women impossible to deal with from a man's standpoint, and which renders it almost necessary for men to estimate them at a low intellectual standard. For even in the supreme pa.s.sion of love, millions of women are only capable of understanding its merely physical side, while the union of soul with soul is never consummated:

Where is that love supreme In which souls meet? Where is it satisfied?

En-isled on heaving sands Of lone desire, spirit to spirit cries, While float across the skies Bright phantoms of fair lands, Where fancies fade not and where dreams abide."

His voice dropped to the softest musical cadence, and I looked up. He answered my look.

"Dear one!" he said, "You shall go to the House of Aselzion, and with you will be the future!"