possess this,” or “I have secured that,”—­for, reducing all circumstances to a prosaic level, all that I knew was that I had met in my present companion a man who had a singular, almost compelling attractiveness, and with whose personality I seemed to be familiar; also, that under some power which he might possibly have exerted, I had in an unexpected place and at an unexpected time seen certain visions or ‘impressions’ which might or might not be the working of my own brain under a temporary magnetic influence.  I was fully aware that such things could happen—­and yet—­I was not by any means sure that they had so happened in this case.  And while I was thus hurriedly trying to think out the problem, he replied to my question.

“That depends on ourselves,”—­he said—­“On you perhaps more than any other.”

I looked up at him wonderingly.

“On me?” I echoed.

He smiled a little.

“Why, yes!  A woman always decides.”

I turned my eyes again towards the sky.  Long lines of delicate pale blue and green were now intermingled with the amber light of the after-glow, and the whole scene was one of indescribable grandeur and beauty.

“I wish I could understand,”—­I murmured.

“Let me help you,”—­he said, gently.  “Possibly I can make things clearer for you.  You are just now under the spell of your own psychic impressions and memories.  You think you have seen strange episodes—­these are nothing but pictures stored far away back in the cells of your spiritual brain, which (through the medium of your present material brain) project on your vision not only presentments and reflections of past scenes and events, but which also reproduce the very words and sounds attending those scenes and events.  That is all.  Loch Coruisk has shown you nothing but itself in varying effects of light and cloud—­there is no mystery here but the everlasting mystery of Nature in which you and I play our several parts.  What you have seen or heard I do not know—­for each individual experience is and always must be different.  All that I am fully conscious of is, that our having met and our being here together to-day is, as it were, the mending of a broken chain.  But it rests with you—­and even with me—­to break it once more if we choose.”

I was silent, not because I could not but because I dared not speak.  All my life seemed suddenly to hang on the point of a hair’s-breadth of possibility.

“I think,”—­he continued in the same quiet voice—­“that just now we may let things take their ordinary course.  You and I”—­here he paused, and impelled by some secret emotion I lifted my eyes to his.  Instinctively, and with a rush of feeling, we stretched out our hands to each other.  He clasped mine in his own, and stooping his head kissed them tenderly.  “You and I,”—­he went on—­“have met before in many a phase of life and on many a plane of thought—­and I believe we know and realise this.  Let us be satisfied so far—­and if destiny has anything of happiness or wisdom in store for us let us try to assist its fulfilment and not stand in the way.”