To this, the creed just spoken of, I, the writer of this present narrative, belong.  It has nothing whatever to do with merely human dogma,—­and yet I would have it distinctly understood that I am not opposed to ‘forms’ of religion save where they overwhelm religion itself and allow the Spirit to be utterly lost in the Letter.  For ‘the letter killeth,—­the spirit giveth life.’  So far as a ‘form’ may make a way for truth to become manifest, I am with it,—­but when it is a mere Sham or Show, and when human souls are lost rather than saved by it, I am opposed to it.  And with all my deficiencies I am conscious that I may risk the chance of a lower world’s disdain, seeing that the ‘higher world without end’ is open to me in its imperishable brightness and beauty, to live in both now, and for ever.  No one can cast me out of that glorious and indestructible Universe, for ’whithersoever I go there will be the sun and the moon, and the stars and visions and communion with the gods.’

And so I will fulfil the task allotted to me, and will enter at once upon my ’story’—­in which form I shall endeavour to convey to my readers certain facts which are as far from fiction as the sayings of the prophets of old,—­sayings that we know have been realised by the science of to-day.  Every great truth has at first been no more than a dream,—­that is to say, a thought, or an instinctive perception of the Soul reaching after its own immortal heritage.  And what the Soul demands it receives.

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At a time of year when the indolent languors of an exceptionally warm summer disinclined most people for continuous hard work, and when those who could afford it had left their ordinary avocations for the joys of a long holiday, I received a pressing invitation from certain persons whom I had met by chance during one London season, to join them in a yachting cruise.  My intending host was an exceedingly rich man, a widower with one daughter, a delicate and ailing creature who, had she been poor, would have been irreverently styled ‘a tiresome old maid,’ but who by reason of being a millionaire’s sole heiress was alluded to with sycophantic tenderness by all and sundry as ‘Poor Miss Catherine.’  Morton Harland, her father, was in a certain sense notorious for having written and published a bitter, cold and pitiless attack on religion, which was the favourite reading of many scholars and literary men, and this notable performance, together with the well accredited reports of his almost fabulous wealth, secured for him two social sets,—­the one composed of such human sharks as are accustomed to swim round the plutocrat,—­the other of the cynical, listless, semi-bored portion of a so-called cultured class who, having grown utterly tired of themselves, presumed that it was clever to be equally tired of God.  I was surprised that such a man as he was should think of including me among his guests, for I had scarcely exchanged a dozen words with him, and