constant and the faithful to death.  There is before you a third, destiny, great and awful, but grand beyond power of telling.  Body and heart have had their full cup of happiness, have enjoyed to the full what has been set in their way to enjoy.  To the full you have enjoyed wealth and success and the sensuality of a refined and artistic luxury; to the full, as only a few rarely-gifted men can, you have enjoyed the purest and highest love that earth can give.  Think not that all ends here.  The greatest of destinies is but begun, and it is the destiny of the soul Two days ago if I had told you there was something higher in you than the loving heart, you would not have believed me; now you do.  It is the ethereal portion of the heart, that which longs to be loosed from the body and floating upwards to rejoin its other half.

“Your love has been of the best kind that falls to the lot of man.  Not a single shadow of doubting fell between you.  It has been sweet if it has seemed short—­but it has really lasted a long time, as long as some people’s lives.  You are many years older than you were when it began, for a month or two ago—­or whenever it was that your heart first awoke—­you were entirely immersed in the material view of things that belonged naturally enough to your position and mode of life.  Now you have passed the critical border-land wherein love wanders, himself not knowing whither he shall lead his followers, whether back to the thick green pasture and heavy-scented groves of sensual existence or forward to free wind-swept heights of spiritual blessedness, where those who are true until they die walk forth into truth everlasting.  Yours is the faith and the truth that abide always, yours henceforward shall be the perfect union of souls, yours the ethereal range of the outer firmament.  Take my hand, brother, in yours, and seek with me the path to those heights—­to that pinnacle of paradise where you shall meet once more the spirit elected to yours.”

Ram Lal stood beside Isaacs, whose face was still hidden, and laid his hand with tender gentleness on the weary head.  The old man looked kindly down as he touched the thick black hair, and then raised his eyes and looked out through the door at the brightening landscape over which the morning sun was shedding warmth and beauty once more.

“Brother,” he continued, “come forth with me.  You have suffered too much to mix again with the world, even if you wished it.  Come forth, and your soul shall live for ever.  Your grief shall be turned to joy, and the sinking heart shall be lifted to heights untried.  As now the sun steadily rises in his unerring course, following the pale footsteps of the fleet dawning, and fulfilling her half spoken promises a million-fold in his goodness; as now the all-muffling heaviness of the sad dark night is forgotten in the gladness of day—­so shall your brief time of darkness and dull distress perish and vanish swiftly at the first glimpses of