Again Lady Bellamy shut her eyes and thought, and, when she drew up their heavy lids, Angela saw that there was something of a peaceful look about them.

“Stand so,” she said to Angela, “there where the light falls upon your face.  That will do; now shall I tell you what I read there?  On your forehead sit resolute power to grasp, and almost measureless capacity to imagine; in your eyes there is a sympathy not to be guessed by beings of a coarser fibre; those eyes could look at Heaven and not be dazzled.  Your whole face speaks of a purity and single-mindedness which I can read but cannot understand.  Your mind rejects the glittering bubbles that men follow, and seeks the solid truth.  Your spirit is in tune with things of light and air; it can float to the extremest heights of our mental atmosphere, and thence can almost gaze into the infinite beyond.  Pure, but not cold, thirsting for a wider knowledge, and at times breathing the air of a higher world; resolute, but patient; proud, and yet humble to learn; holy, but aspiring; conscious of gifts you do not know how to use, girl, you rise as near to what is divine as a mortal may.  I have always thought so, now I am sure of it.”

“Lady Bellamy!”

“Hush!  I have a reason for what I say.  I do not ask you to waste time by listening to senseless panegyrics.  Listen:  I will tell you what I have never told to a living soul before.  For years I have been a student of a lore almost forgotten in this country—­a lore which once fully acquired will put the powers that lie hid in Nature at the command of its possessor, that will even enable him to look beyond Nature, and perhaps, so far as the duration of existence is concerned, for awhile to triumph over it.  That lore you can learn, though it baffled me.  My intellect and determination enabled me to find the cues to it, and to stumble on some of its secrets, but I could not follow them; too late I learnt that only the good and pure can do that.  Much of the result of years of toil I destroyed the other night, but I still know enough to empower you to reconstruct what I annihilated; you can learn more in one year than I learnt in ten.  I am grateful to you, and, if you wish it, I will show you the way.”

Angela listened, open-eyed.  Lady Bellamy was right, she was greedy of knowledge and the power that springs from knowledge.

“But would it not be wrong?” she said.

“There can be nothing wrong in what the ruling Wisdom allows us to acquire without the help of what is evil.  But do not be deceived, such knowledge and power as this is not a thing to be trifled with.  To obtain a mastery over it, you must devote your life to it; you must give it

         “‘Allegiance whole, not strained to suit desire,’

“No earthly passion must come to trouble the fixed serenity of your aspirations; that was one, but only one, of the reasons of my failure.  You must leave your Arthur to Mrs. Carr, and henceforward put him as much out of your mind as possible; and this, that you may be able to separate yourself from earthly bonds and hopes and fears.  Troubled waters reflect a broken image.”