And he placed his two hands for a moment over my eyes and then removed them.  I uttered a cry of ecstasy—­for there before me on the moonlit water I saw the ’Dream’!—­her sails glittering with light, and her aerial shape clearly defined against the sky!  Oh, how I longed to fly across the strip of water which alone seemed to divide us!—­and once more to stand on the deck beside him whom I now loved more than my very hopes of heaven!  But I knew it was only a vision conjured up before me by the magic of Aselzion,—­a magic used gently for my sake, to help and comfort me in a moment of sadness and heart’s longing.  And I watched, knowing that the picture must fade,- -as it slowly did,—­vanishing like a rainbow in a swirl of cloud.

“It is indeed a ’Dream’!” I said, smiling faintly, as I turned again to Aselzion—­“I pray that love itself may never be so fleeting!”

“If love is fleeting, it is not love!”—­he answered—­“As ephemeral passion called by that name is the ordinary sort of attraction existing between ordinary men and women,—­men, who see no farther than the gratification of a desire, and women, who see no higher than the yielding to that desire.  Men who love in the highest and most faithful meaning of the term, are much rarer than women,—­women are very near the divine in love when it is first awakened in them—­ if afterwards they sink to a lower level, it is generally the men who have dragged them down.  Unless a man is bent on the highest, he is apt to settle on the lowest—­whereas a woman generally soars to the highest ideals at first in the blind instinct of a Soul seeking its mate—­how often she is hurled back from the empyrean only the angels know!  Not to all is given power to master and control the life-forces—­and it is this I would have you understand before I leave you to-night.  I can teach you the way to hold your life safely above all disintegrating elements—­but the learning of the lesson rests with yourself.”

He sat down, and I resumed my place in the chair opposite to him, prepared to hear him with the closest attention.  There were a few things on the table which I had not previously noticed, and one of these was a circular object covered with a cloth.  He removed this covering, and showed me a crystal globe which appeared to be full of some strange volatile fluid, clear in itself, but intersected with endless floating brilliant dots and lines.

“Look well at this”—­he said—­“for here you have a very simple manifestation of a great truth.  These dots and lines which you observe perpetually in motion are an epitome of what is going on in the composition of every human being.  Some of them, as you see, go in different directions, yet meet and mingle with each other at various points of convergence—­then again become separated.  They are the building-up and the disintegrating forces of the whole cosmos—­ and—­mark this well!—­they are all, when unimprisoned, directed by a governing will-power.  You, in your