“Beloved!” he said—­“I call you by this name as I have always called you through many cycles of time!  Is it not strange that even the eager spirit, craving for its preordained mate, is subject to error?  I thought I had found her whom I should love a little while before I met you—­but this was a momentary blindness!—­You are the one I have sought for many centuries!—­You are the one and only beloved!—­ promise never to leave me again!” She answered—­and I heard her murmur, soft as a sigh—­“I promise!” Still walking together like lovers, they came on—­I knew they must pass me,—­and I stood in their way that Rafel Santoris at least might see me—­might know that I had adventured into the House of Aselzion for his sake, and that so far I had not failed!  If he were false, then surely the failure would be his!  With a sickening heart I watched him approach,—­his blue eyes rested on me carelessly with a cold smile—­his fair companion glanced at me as at a stranger—­and they moved on and passed out of sight.  I could not have spoken, had I tried—­I was stricken dumb and feeble.  This was the end, then?  I had made my journey to no purpose,—­he had already found another ‘subject’ for his influence!

Stunned and bewildered with the confusion of thought in my brain, I tried to walk a few paces, and found the ground soft as velvet, while a cool breeze blowing through the trees refreshed my aching forehead and eyes.  I still held the book—­’The Secret of Life’—­and in a dull, aimless way thought how useless it was!  What does Life matter if Love be untrue?  The sun was shining somewhere above me, for I saw glinting reflections of it through the close boughs, and there were birds singing.  But both beauty of sight and beauty of sound were lost to me—­I had no real consciousness left save that the lover who professed to love me with an eternal love loved me no more!  So the world was desolate, and heaven itself a blank!—­death, and death alone seemed dear and desirable!  I walked slowly and with difficulty—­my limbs were languid, and I had lost all courage.  If I could have found my way to Aselzion I would have told him—­“This is enough!  No more do I need the secret of youth or life, since love has left me.”

Presently I began to think more coherently.  A little while back I had heard voices behind a wall saying that Rafel Santoris was dead,- -drowned in his own yacht ‘off Armadale, in Skye.’  If that was true how came he here?  I questioned myself in vain,—­till presently I gathered up sufficient force to remember that love—­real love—­knows no change.  Did I believe in my lover’s love, or did I doubt it?  That was a point for my own consideration!  But, had I not the testimony of my own eyes?  Was I not myselt the witness of his altered mind?