think we ever got outside that dubiety, but made up our minds, like other converts, to gulp the primary postulate, and pay the twenty-six shillings.  From the first, however, Narcissus had never actually entrusted all his spiritual venture in this particular craft:  he saw the truth independent of them, not they alone held her for him, though she might hold them, and they might be that one of the many avenues for which he had waited to lead him nearer to her heart.  That was all.  His belief in the new illumination neither stood nor fell with them, though his ardour for it culminated in the experience.  One must take the most doubtful experiment seriously if we are in earnest for results.

So next came the sacred name of ‘the Order,’ which, Reader, I cannot tell thee, as I have never known it, Narcissus being bound by horrid oaths to whisper it to no man, and to burn at midnight the paper which gave it to his eyes.  From this time, also, we could exchange no deep confidences of the kind at all, for the various MSS. by means of which he was to begin his excursions into Urania, and which his ‘guru’ sent from time to time—­at first, it must be admitted, with a diligent frequency—­were secret too.  So several months went by, and my knowledge of his ‘chela-ship’ was confined to what I could notice, and such trifling harmless gossip as ‘Heard from “guru” this morning,’ ’Copying an old MS. last night,’ and so on.  What I could notice was truly, as Lamb would say, ‘great mastery,’ for lo!  Narcissus, whose eyes had never missed a maiden since he could walk, and lay in wait to wrest his tribute of glance and blush from every one that passed, lo! he had changed all that, and Saint Anthony in an old master looks not more resolutely ‘the other way’ than he, his very thoughts crushing his flesh with invisible pincers.  No more softly-scented missives lie upon his desk a-mornings; and, instead of blowing out the candle to dream of Daffodilia, he opens his eyes in the dark to defy—­the Dweller on the Threshold, if haply he should indeed already confront him.

One thrilling piece of news in regard to the latter he was unable to conceal.  He read it out to me one flushed morning:—­

  ‘I—­have—­seen&m
dash;­him—­and—­am—­his—­master,’

wrote the ‘guru,’ in answer to his neophyte’s half fearful question.  Fitly underlined and sufficiently spaced, it was a statement calculated to awe, if only by its mendacity.  I wonder if that chapter of Bulwer’s would impress one now as it used to do then.  It were better, perhaps, not to try.

The next news of these mysteries was the conclusion of them.  When so darkly esoteric a body begins to issue an extremely catchpenny ‘organ,’ with advertisements of theosophic ‘developers,’ magic mirrors, and mesmeric discs, and also advertises large copies of the dread symbol of the Order, ‘suitable for framing,’ at five shillings plain and seven and sixpence coloured, it is, of course, impossible