and incapable of applying to any one thing—­that, dear Philip, is the height of misery, and that is what I feel when you are absent.  Recollect, I have your promise, Philip.  As captain, you have the means of receiving your wife on board.  I am bitterly disappointed in being left this time; do, therefore, to a certain degree, console me by promising that I shall sail with you next voyage, if Heaven permit your return.”

“I promise it, Amine, since you are so earnest.  I can refuse you nothing; but I have a foreboding that yours and my happiness will be wrecked for ever.  I am not a visionary, but it does appear to me that, strangely mixed up as I am, at once with this world and the next, some little portion of futurity is opened to me.  I have given my promise, Amine, but from it I would fain be released.”

“And if ill do come, Philip, it is our destiny.  Who can avert fate?”

“Amine, we are free agents, and to a certain extent are permitted to direct our own destinies.”

“Ay, so would Father Seysen fain have made me believe; but what he said in support of his assertion was to me incomprehensible.  And yet he said that it was a part of the Catholic faith.  It may be so—­I am unable to understand many other points.  I wish your faith were made more simple.  As yet the good man—­for good he really is—­has only led me into doubt.”

“Passing through doubt, you will arrive at conviction, Amine.”

“Perhaps so,” replied Amine; “but it appears to me that I am as yet but on the outset of my journey.  But come, Philip, let us return.  You must to Amsterdam, and I will go with you.  After your labours of the day, at least until you sail, your Amine’s smiles must still enliven you.  Is it not so?”

“Yes, dearest, I would have proposed it.  I wonder much how Schriften could come here.  I did not see his body it is certain, but his escape is to me miraculous.  Why did he not appear when saved? where could he have been?  What think you, Amine?”

“What I have long thought, Philip.  He is a ghoul with an evil eye, permitted for some cause to walk the earth in human form; and, is, certainly, in some way, connected with your strange destiny.  If it requires anything to convince me of the truth of all that has passed, it is his appearance—­the wretched Afrit!  Oh, that I had my mother’s powers!—­but I forget; it displeases you, Philip, that I ever talk of such things, and I am silent.”

Philip replied not; and absorbed in their own meditations they walked back in silence to the cottage.  Although Philip had made up his own mind, he immediately sent the Portuguese priest to summon Father Seysen, that he might communicate with them and take their opinion as to the summons he had received.  Having entered into a fresh detail of the supposed death of Schriften, and his reappearance as a messenger, he then left the two priests to consult together, and went upstairs to Amine.  It was more than two hours before Philip was called down, and Father Seysen appeared to be in a state of great perplexity.