inviting and accepting the burden of age.  They will remind you that twenty years ago you did so and so,—­or that they have known you over thirty years—­or they will tell you that considering your age you look well, or a thousand and one things of that kind, as if it were a fault or even a crime to be alive for a certain span of time,—­whereas if you simply shook off such unnecessary attentions and went your own way, taking freely of the constant output of life and energy supplied to you by Nature, you would outwit all these croakers of feebleness and decay and renew your vital forces to the end.  But to do this you must have a constant aim in life and a ruling passion.’  As I told you, I laughed at him and at what I called his ‘folly,’ but now—­well, now—­it’s a case of ‘let those laugh who win.’”

“And you think he has won?” I asked.

“Most assuredly—­I cannot deny it.  But the secret of his victory is beyond me.”

“I should think it is beyond most people,” I replied—­“For if we could all keep ourselves young and strong we would take every means in our power to attain such happiness—­”

“Would we, though?” And his brows knitted perplexedly—­“If we knew, would we take the necessary trouble?  We will hardly obey a physician’s orders for our good even when we are really ill—­would we in health follow any code of life in order to keep well?”

I laughed.

“Perhaps not!” I said—­“I expect it will always be the same thing—­ ‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’  Goodnight!”

I held out my hand.  He took it in his own and kept it a moment.

“It’s curious we should have met Santoris so soon after my telling you about him,” he said—­“It’s one of those coincidences which one cannot explain.  You are very like him in some of your ideas—­you two ought to be very great friends.”

“Ought we?”—­and I smiled—­“Perhaps we shall be!  Again, Good-night!”

“Good-night!” And I left him to his meditations and went down to my cabin, only stopping for a moment to say good-night to Catherine and Dr. Brayle, who were playing bridge with Mr. Swinton and Captain Derrick in the saloon.  Once in my room, I was thankful to be alone.  Every extraneous thing seemed an intrusion or an impertinence,—­the thoughts that filled my brain were all absorbing, and went so far beyond the immediate radius of time and space that I could hardly follow their flight.  I smiled as I imagined what ordinary people would think of the experience through which I had passed and was passing.  ‘Foolish fancies!’ ‘Neurotic folly!’ and other epithets of the kind would be heaped upon me if they knew—­they, the excellent folk whose sole objects in life are so ephemeral as to be the things of the hour, the day, or the month merely, and who if they ever pause to consider eternal possibilities at all, do so reluctantly perhaps in church on Sundays, comfortably dismissing them for the more solid prospect of dinner.  And of Love?