The effect of this shock demented my father for a time.  How it was that he came to marry again I could never understand.  During my childhood he had, as far as I could see, no real sympathy with anything save his own dreams.  In after years I came to know the truth.  He was kind enough in disposition, but he looked upon us, his children, as his second wife’s property, his dreams as his own.  Once every year he used to go to Switzerland and stay there for several weeks; and, as the object of these journeys was evidently to revisit the old spots made sacred to him by reminiscences of his romantic love for his first wife, it may he readily imagined that they were not looked upon with any favour by my mother.  She never accompanied him on these occasions, nor would she let Frank do so—­another proof of the early partiality she showed for my brother.  As I was of less importance, my father (previous to my accident) used to take me, to my intense delight and enjoyment; but during the period of my lameness he went to Switzerland alone.

It was during one of my childish visits to Switzerland that I learnt an important fact in connection with my father and his first wife—­the fact that since her death he had become a mystic and had joined a certain sect of mystics founded by Lavater.

This is how I came to know it.  My attention had been arrested by a book lying on my father’s writing-table—­a large book called ’The Veiled Queen, by Philip Aylwin’—­and I began to read it.  The statements therein were of an astounding kind, and the idea of a beautiful woman behind a veil completely fascinated my childish mind.  And the book was full of the most amazing stories collected from all kinds of outlandish sources.  One story, called ’The Flying Donkey of the Ruby Hills,’ riveted my attention so much that it possessed me, and even now I feel that I can repeat every word of it.  It was a story of a donkey-driver, who, having lost his wife Alawiyah, went and lived alone in the ruby hills of Badakhshan, where the Angel of Memory fashioned for him out of his own sorrow and tears an image of his wife.  This image was mistaken by a townsman named Hasan for his own wife, and Ja’afar was summoned before the Ka’dee.  Afterwards, when The Veiled Queen came into my possession, I noticed that this story was quoted for motto on the title-page: 

’Then quoth the Ka’dee, laughing until his grinders appeared:  “Rather, by Allah, would I take all the punishment thou dreadest, thou most false donkey-driver of the Ruby Hills, than believe this story of thine—­this mad, mad story, that she with whom thou wast seen was not the living wife of Hasan here (as these four legal witnesses have sworn), but thine own dead spouse, Alawiyah, refashioned for thee by the Angel of Memory out of thine own sorrow and unquenchable fountain of tears.”

’Quoth Ja’afar, bowing low his head:  “Bold is the donkey-driver, O Ka’dee! and bold the Ka’dee who dares say what he will believe, what disbelieve—­not knowing in any wise the mind of Allah—­not knowing in any wise his own heart and what it shall some day suffer."’