A folded paper fell out of this letter,—­it contained full instructions as to the way I should go on the journey I intended to make to the mysterious House of Aselzion—­and I was glad to find that I should not have to travel as far as I had at first imagined.  I began at once to make my plans for leaving the Harlands as soon as possible, and before going to bed I wrote to my friend Francesca, who I knew would certainly expect me to visit her in Inverness-shire as soon as my cruise in the Harlands’ yacht was over, and briefly stated that business of an important nature called me abroad for two or three weeks, but that I fully anticipated being at home in England again before the end of October.  As it was now just verging on the end of August, I thought I was allowing myself a fairly wide margin for absence.  When I had folded and sealed my letter ready for posting, an irresistible sense of sleep came over me, and I yielded to it gratefully.  I found myself too overcome by it even to think,—­ and I laid my head down upon the pillows with a peaceful consciousness that all was well,—­that all would be well—­and that in trying to make sure of the intentions of Fate towards me both in life and love, I could not be considered as altogether foolish.  Of course, judged by the majority of people, I know I am already counted as worse than foolish for the impressions and experiences I here undertake to narrate, but that kind of judgment does not affect me, seeing that their own daily and hourly folly is so visibly pronounced and has such unsatisfactory and frequently disastrous results, that mine—­if it indeed be folly to choose lasting and eternal things rather than ephemeral and temporal ones,—­cannot but seem light in comparison.  Love, as the world generally conceives of it, is hardly worth having—­for if we become devoted to persons who must in time be severed from us by death or other causes, we have merely wasted the wealth of our affections.  Only as a perfect, eternal, binding force is love of any value,—­and unless one can be sure in one’s own self that there is the strength and truth and courage to make it thus perfect, eternal and binding, it is better to have nothing to do with what after all is the divinest of divine passions,—­the passion of creativeness, from which springs all thought, all endeavour, all accomplishment.

When I woke the next morning I did not need to be told that the ‘Dream’ had set her wonderful sails and flown.  A sense of utter desolation was in the air, and my own loneliness was impressed upon me with overwhelming bitterness and force.  It was a calm, brilliant morning, and when I went up on deck the magnificent scenery of Loch Scavaig was, to my thinking, lessened in effect by the excessive glare of the sun.  The water was smooth as oil, and where the ‘Dream’ had been anchored, showing her beautiful lines and tapering spars against the background of the mountains, there was now a dreary vacancy.  The whole scene looked intolerably dull and lifeless, and I was impatient to be away from it.  I said as much at breakfast, a meal at which Catherine Harland never appeared, and where I was accustomed to take the head of the table, at Mr. Harland’s request, to dispense the tea and coffee.  Dr. Brayle seemed malignly amused at my remark.