beyond it,—­a kind of little shrine, hung with pale purple silk, and looking as though it were intended to hold something infinitely precious.  I entered it hesitatingly, not sure whether I was doing right or wrong, and yet impelled by something more than curiosity.  As I stepped across the threshold I heard the voices behind the wall again—­they sounded louder and more threatening, and I paused,—­half afraid, yet longing to know all that might yet be said, though such knowledge might mean nothing but misery and despair to me.

“All women are fools!”—­and this trite observation was made by someone speaking in harsh and bitter accents—­“It is not love that really moves them so much as the self-satisfaction of being loved. No woman could be faithful for long to a dead man—­she would lack the expected response to her superabundant sentimentality, and she would tire of waiting to meet him in Paradise—­if she believed in such a possibility, which in nine cases out of ten she would not.”

“With Aselzion there are no dead men”—­said another of the unseen speakers—­“They have merely passed into another living state.  And according to his theories, lovers cannot be separated, even by what is called death, for long.”

“Poor comfort!” and with the words I heard a laugh of scornful mockery—­“The women who have loved Rafel Santoris would hardly thank you for it!”

I shuddered a little, as with cold.  ’The women who have loved Rafel Santoris!’ This phrase seemed to darken the very recollection of the handsome face and form of the man I had, almost unconsciously to myself, begun to idealise—­something coarse and common suggested itself in association with him, and my heart sank within me, deprived of hope.  Voices, merely!—­yet how they tortured me!  If I could only know the truth, I thought!—­if Aselzion would only come and tell me the worst at once!  In a kind of stupor of unnameable grief I stood in the little purple-hung shrine so suddenly opened to me, and began to dreamily consider the unkindness and harshness of those voices!—­Ah! so like the voices of the world!  Voices that sneer and mock and condemn!—­voices that would rather utter a falsehood than any word that should help and comfort—­voices that take a cruel pleasure in saying just the one thing that will wound and crush an aspiring spirit!—­voices that cannot tune themselves to speak of love without grudging bitterness and scorn—­voices—­ah God!—­if only all the harsh and calumniating voices of humanity were stilled, what a heaven this earth would be!

And yet—­why should we listen to them?  What have they really to do with us?  Is the Soul to be moved from its centre by casual opinion?  What is it to me that this person or that person approves or disapproves my actions?  Why should I be disturbed by rumours, or frightened by ill report?