He let go my hand very gently--I felt a sudden sense of utter loneliness.

"You do not--you will not misjudge me?" I said.

"I! Dear, I have made so many errors of judgment in the past and I have lost you so many times, that I shall do nothing now which might lose you again!"

He smiled, and for one moment I was impelled to throw hesitation to the winds and say all that I knew in my inmost self ought to be said,--but my rebellious will held me back, and I remained silent,--while he turned away and rejoined the rest of the party, with whom he was soon chatting in such a cheery, easy fashion that they appeared to forget that there was anything remarkable about him or about his wonderful vessel, which had now turned on her course and was carrying us back to Loch Scavaig at a speed which matched the fleetest wind. When she arrived at her former anchorage just opposite the 'Diana,' we saw that all the crew of Mr. Harland's yacht were on deck watching our movements, which must have been well worth watching considering what an amazing spectacle the 'Dream' made of herself and her glittering sails against the dark loch and mountains,--so brilliant indeed as almost to eclipse the very moon. But the light began to pale as soon as we dropped anchor, and very soon faded out completely, whereupon the sailors hauled down canvas, uttering musical cries as they pulled and braced it together. This work done, they retired, and a couple of servants waited upon our party, bringing wine and fruit as a parting refreshment before we said good-night,--and once again the sweet voice of the Egyptian boy singer smote upon our ears, with a prelude of harp-strings:

Good-night,--farewell! If it should chance that nevermore we meet, Remember that the hours we spent together here were sweet!

Good-night,--farewell! If henceforth different ways of life we wend, Remember that I sought to walk beside you to the end!

Good-night,--farewell! When present things are merged into the past, Remember that I love you and shall love you to the last!

My heart beat with a quick and sudden agony of pain--was it, could it be true that I was of my own accord going to sever myself from one whom I knew,--whom I felt--to be all in all to me?

"Good-night!" said a low voice close to my ear.

I started. I had lost myself in a wilderness of thought and memory.

Santoris stood beside me.

"Your friends are going," he said,--"and I too shall be gone to-morrow!"

A wave of desolation overcame me.

"Ah, no!" I exclaimed--"Surely you will not go--"

"I must," he answered, quietly,--"Are not YOU going? It has been a joy to meet you, if only for a little while--a pause in the journey,--an attempt at an understanding!--though you have decided that we must part again."

I clasped my hands together in a kind of desperation.

"What can I do?" I murmured--"If I yielded now to my own impulses--"

"Ah! If you did"--he said, wistfully--"But you will not; and perhaps, after all, it is better so. It is no doubt intended that you should be absolutely certain of yourself this time. And I will not stand in the way. Good-night,--and farewell!"

I looked at him with a smile, though the tears were in my eyes.

"I will not say farewell!" I answered.

He raised my hands lightly to his lips.

"That is kind of you!" he said--"and to-morrow you shall hear from me about Aselzion and the best way for you to see him. He is spending the summer in Europe, which is fortunate for you, as you will not have to make so far a journey."

We broke off our conversation here as the others joined us,--and in a very little while we had left the 'Dream' and were returning to our own yacht. To the last, as the motor launch rushed with us through the water, I kept my eyes fixed on the reposeful figure of Santoris, who with folded arms on the deck rail of his vessel, watched our departure.

Should I never see him again, I wondered? What was the strange impulse that had more or less moved my spirit to a kind of opposition against his, and made me so determined to seek out for myself the things that he a.s.sumed to have mastered? I could not tell. I only knew that from the moment he had begun to relate the personal narrative of his own studies and experiences, I had resolved to go through the same training whatever it was, and learn what he had learned, if such a thing were possible. I did not think I should succeed so well,--but some new knowledge I felt I should surely gain. The extraordinary attraction he exercised over me was growing too strong to resist, yet I was determined not to yield to it because I doubted both its cause and its effect. Love, I knew, could not, as he had said, be a.n.a.lysed--but the love I had always dreamed of was not the love with which the majority of mankind are content--the mere physical delight which ends in satiety. It was something not only for time, but for eternity. Away from Santoris I found it quite easy to give myself up to the dream of joy which shone before me like the mirage of a promised land,--but in his company I felt as though something held me back and warned me to beware of too quickly s.n.a.t.c.hing at a purely personal happiness.

We reached the 'Diana' in a very few minutes--we had made the little journey almost in silence, for my companions were, or appeared to be, as much lost in thought as I was. As we descended to our cabins Mr.

Harland drew me back and detained me alone for a moment.

"Santoris is going away to-morrow," he said--"He will probably have set those wonderful sails of his and flown before daybreak. I'm sorry!"

"So am I," I answered--"But, after all--you would hardly want him to stay, would you? His theories of life are very curious and upsetting, and you all think him a sort of charlatan playing with the mysteries of earth and heaven! If he is able to read thoughts, he cannot be altogether flattered at the opinion held of him by Dr. Brayle, for example!"

Mr. Harland's brows knitted perplexedly.

"He says he could cure me of my illness," he went on,--"and Brayle declares that a cure is impossible."

"You prefer to believe Brayle, of course?" I queried.

"Brayle is a physician of note," he replied,--"A man who has taken his degree in medicine and knows what he is talking about. Santoris is merely a mystic."

I smiled a little sadly.

"I see!" And I held out my hand to say good-night. "He is a century before his time, and maybe it is better to die than forestall a century."

Mr. Harland laughed as he pressed my hand cordially.

"Enigmatical, as usual!" he said--"You and Santoris ought to be congenial spirits!"

"Perhaps we are!" I answered, carelessly, as I left him;--"Stranger things than that have happened!"

XII

A LOVE-LETTER

To those who are ignorant of, or indifferent to, the psychic forces working behind all humanity and creating the causes which evolve into effect, it cannot but seem strange,--even eccentric and abnormal,--that any one person, or any two persons for that matter, should take the trouble to try and ascertain the immediate intention and ultimate object of their lives. The daily routine of ordinary working, feeding and sleeping existence, varied by little social conventions and obligations which form a kind of break to the persistent monotony of the regular treadmill round, should be, they think, sufficient for any sane, well-balanced, self-respecting creature,--and if a man or woman elects to stand out of the common ruck and say: "I refuse to live in a chaos of uncertainties--I will endeavour to know why my particular atom of self is considered a necessary, if infinitesimal, part of the Universe,"--such an one is looked upon with either distrust or derision. In matters of love especially, where the most ill-a.s.sorted halves persist in fitting themselves together as if they could ever make a perfect whole, a woman is considered foolish if she gives her affections where it is 'not expedient'--and a man is looked upon as having 'ruined his career' if he allows a great pa.s.sion to dominate him, instead of a calm, well-weighed, respectable sort of sentiment which has its fitting end in an equally calm, well-weighed, respectable marriage. These are the laws and observances of social order, excellent in many respects, but frequently responsible for a great bulk of the misery attendant upon many forms of human relationship. It is not, however, possible to the ordinary mind to realise that somewhere and somehow, every two component parts of a whole MUST come together, sooner or later, and that herein may be found the key to most of the great love tragedies of the world. The wrong halves mated,--the right halves finding each other out and rushing together recklessly and inopportunely because of the resistless Law which draws them together,--this is the explanation of many a life's disaster and despair, as well as of many a life's splendid attainment and victory.

And the trouble or the triumph, whichever it be, will never be lessened till human beings learn that in love, which is the greatest and most divine Force on earth or in heaven, the Soul, not the body, must first be considered, and that no one can fulfil the higher possibilities of his or her nature, till each individual unit is conjoined with that only other portion of itself which is as one with it in thought and in the intuitive comprehension of its higher needs.

I knew all this well enough, and had known it for years, and it was hardly necessary for me to dwell upon it, as I sat alone in my cabin that night, too restless to sleep, and, almost too uneasy even to think. What had happened to me was simply that I had by a curious chance or series of chances been brought into connection again with the individual Soul of a man whom I had known and loved ages ago. To the psychist, such a circ.u.mstance does not seem as strange as it is to the great majority of people who realise no greater force than Matter, and who have no comprehension of Spirit, and no wish to comprehend it, though even the dullest of these often find themselves brought into contact with persons whom they feel they have met and known before, and are unable to understand why they receive such an impression. In my case I had not only to consider the one particular ident.i.ty which seemed so closely connected with my own--but also the other individuals with whom I had become more or less reluctantly a.s.sociated,--Catherine Harland and Dr. Brayle especially. Mr. Harland had, unconsciously to himself, been merely the link to bring the broken bits of a chain together--his secretary, Mr. Swinton, occupied the place of the always necessary nonent.i.ty in a group of intellectually or psychically connected beings,--and I was perfectly sure, without having any actual reason for my conviction, that if I remained much longer in Catherine Harland's company, her chance liking for me would turn into the old hatred with which she had hated me in a bygone time,--a hatred fostered by Dr. Brayle, who, plainly scheming to marry her and secure her fortune, considered me in the way (as I was) of the influence he desired to exercise over her and her father. Therefore it seemed necessary I should remove myself,--moreover, I was resolved that all the years I had spent in trying to find the way to some of Nature's secrets should not be wasted--I would learn, I too, what Rafel Santoris had learned in the House of Aselzion--and then we might perhaps stand on equal ground, sure of ourselves and of each other! So ran my thoughts in the solitude and stillness of the night--a solitude and stillness so profound that the gentle push of the water against the sides of the yacht, almost noiseless as it was, sounded rough and intrusive. My port-hole was open, and I could see the sinking moon showing through it like a white face in sorrow. Just then I heard a low splash as of oars. I started up and went to the sofa, where, by kneeling on the cushions. I could look through the porthole. There, gliding just beneath me, was a small boat, and my heart gave a sudden leap of joy as I recognised the man who rowed it as Santoris. He smiled as I looked down,--then, standing up in the boat, guided himself alongside, till his head was nearly on a level with the port-hole. He put one hand on its edge.

"Not asleep yet!" he said, softly--"What have you been thinking of? The moon and the sea?--or any other mystery as deep and incomprehensible?"

I stretched out my hand and laid it on his with an involuntary caressing touch.

"I could not leave you without another last word,"--he said--"And I have brought you a letter"--he gave me a sealed envelope as he spoke--"which will tell you how to find Aselzion. I myself will write to him also and prepare him for your arrival. When you do see him you will understand how difficult is the task you wish to undertake,--and, if you should fail, the failure will be a greater sadness to yourself than to me--for I could make things easier for you--"

"I do not want things made easy for me,"--I answered quickly--"I want to do all that you have done--I want to prove myself worthy at least--"

I broke off,--and looked down into his eyes. He smiled.

"Well!" he said--"Are you beginning to remember the happiness we have so often thrown away for a trifle?"

I was silent, though I folded my hand closer over his. The soft white sleepy radiance of the moon on the scarcely moving water around us made everything look dream-like and unreal, and I was hardly conscious of my own existence for the moment, so completely did it seem absorbed by some other influence stronger than any power I had ever known.

"Here are we two,"--he continued, softly--"alone with the night and each other, close to the verge of a perfect understanding--and yet--determined NOT to understand! How often that happens! Every moment, every hour, all over the world, there are souls like ours, barred severally within their own shut gardens, refusing to open the doors! They talk over the walls, through the c.h.i.n.ks and crannies, and peep through the keyholes--but they will not open the doors. How fortunate am I to-night to find even a port-hole open!"