“You tell your story remarkably well,” he said at last, “and I don’t mind confessing that the abnormal character of the whole thing strikes me as beyond question.  Any attempt to explain such sequences by the worn-out old theory of imagination or coincidence would be manifestly futile.  Such coincidences, like miracles, do not happen.  Many things have happened that people call miracles, by which they mean a sort of divine conjuring-trick that is performed or brought about by violating or annihilating natural laws.  That, of course, is absurd.  Nothing happens but in virtue of natural laws, laws just as natural and inherent in the universal scheme of things as gravitation or the precession of the equinoxes, only outside our extremely limited knowledge of the universe.  That, under certain conditions, such interpositions affecting physical organisms may be produced by invisible agencies is, in my view, eminently conceivable.  It is purely a question of evidence.”

“I am so glad you think so,” replied Austin.  “It makes things so much easier.  And then it’s so pleasant to think that one is really surrounded by unseen friends who are looking after one.  I was never a bit afraid of ghosts, and my ghosts are apparently a charming set of people.  I wonder who they are?”

“Ah, that is more than I can tell you,” answered the other, laughing.  “I’m not so favoured as you appear to be.  But come, let’s have a stroll round the garden.  You don’t mind the sun, I know.”

“And the Banqueting Hall!  I insist on the Banqueting Hall,” added Austin, who now began to feel quite at home with his genial host.  “I long to be in there again.  I’m sure it’s full of wonders, if one only had eyes to see.”

“By all means,” smiled St Aubyn, as they went out.  “You shall take your fill of them, never fear.  Don’t forget your hat—­the sun’s pretty powerful to-day.  Doesn’t the lawn look well?”

“Lovely,” assented Austin, admiringly.  “Like a great green velvet carpet.  How do you manage to keep it in such good condition?”

“By plenty of rolling and watering.  That’s the only secret.  Let’s walk this way, down to the pool where the lilies are.  There’ll be plenty of shade under the trees.  Do you see that old statue, just over there by the wall?  That’s a great favourite of mine.  It always looks to me like a petrified youth, a being that will never grow old in soul although its form has existed for centuries, and the stone it’s made of for thousands of thousands of years.  That’s an illustration of the saying that whom the gods love die young.  Not that they die in youth, but that they never really grow old, let them live for eighty years or more, as we count time.  They remain always young in soul, however long their bodies last.  Perhaps that’s what Isaiah had in his mind when he talked about a child dying at a hundred. You’ll never grow old, you know.”