“No!” I said, resolutely—­“For me it is not possible!  I cannot yield to my own inward promptings.  They offer me too much happiness!  I doubt the joy,—­I fear the glory!”

My voice trembled—­the very clasp of his hand unnerved me.

“I will tell you,” he said, after a brief pause, “what you feel.  You are perfectly conscious that between you and myself there is a tie which no power, earthly or heavenly, can break,—­but you are living in a matter-of-fact world with matter-of-fact persons, and the influence they exert is to make you incredulous of the very truths which are an essential part of your spiritual existence.  I understand all this.  I understand also why you wish to go to the House of Aselzion, and you shall go—­”

I uttered an exclamation of relief and pleasure.  His eyes grew dark with earnest gravity as he looked at me.

“You are pleased at what you cannot realise,” he said, slowly—­“If you go to the House of Aselzion—­and I see you are determined—­it will be a matter of such vital import that it can only mean one of two things,—­your entire happiness or your entire misery.  I cannot contemplate with absolute calmness the risk you run,—­and yet it is better that you should follow the dictates of your own soul than be as you are now—­irresolute,—­uncertain of yourself and ready to lose all you have gained!”

‘To lose all I have gained.’  The old insidious terror!  I met his searching gaze imploringly.

“I must not lose anything!” I said, and my voice sank lower,—­“I cannot bear—­to lose you!”

His hand closed on mine with a tighter grasp.

“Yet you doubt!” he said, softly.

“I must know!” I said, resolutely.

He lifted his head with a proud gesture that was curiously familiar to me.

“So the old spirit is not dead in you, my queen,” he said, smiling.  “The old indomitable will!—­the desire to probe to the very centre of things!  Yet love defies analysis,—­and is the only thing that binds the Universe together.  A fact beyond all proving—­a truth which cannot be expounded by any given rule or line but which is the most emphatic force of life!  My queen, it is a force that must either bend or break you!”

I made no reply.  He still held my hand, and we looked out together on the shining expanse of the sea where there was no vessel visible and where our schooner alone flew over the watery, moonlit surface like a winged flame.

“In your working life,” he continued, gently, “you have done much.  You have thought clearly, and you have not been frightened away from any eternal fact by the difficulties of research.  But in your living life you have missed more than you will care to know.  You have been content to remain a passive recipient of influences—­you have not thoroughly learned how to combine and use them.  You have overcome altogether what are generally the chief obstacles in the way of a woman’s