Slowly, sedately, and with an indescribable majesty of movement, the dark Figure glided on before me, and I, a trembling little creature, followed it, I knew not whither.  There was no obstacle in our course,—­doors, walls and windows seemed to melt asunder into nothingness as we passed—­and there was no stop to our onward progress till suddenly I saw before me a steep and narrow spiral stairway of stone winding up into the very centre of a rocky pinnacle, which in its turn lifted its topmost peak into the darkness of a night sky sprinkled with millions of stars.  The sombre Figure paused:  and again I felt the search-light of its invisible eyes burning through me.  Then, as though satisfied with its brief survey, it began to ascend the spiral stair.

I followed step by step,—­the way was long and difficult—­the sharp turns dizzying to the senses, and there seemed no end to the upward winding.  Sometimes I stumbled and nearly fell—­sometimes I groped on hands and knees, always seeing before me the black-draped Form that moved on with such apparently little care as to whether or no I fared ill or well in my obedience to its summons.

And now, as I climbed, all sorts of strange memories began to creep into the crannies of my brain and perplex me with trouble and uncertainty.  Chiefly did my mind dwell on cruelties—­the cruelties practised by human beings to one another,—­moral cruelties especially, they being so much worse than any physical torture.  I thought of the world’s wicked misjudgments passed on those who are greater in spirit than itself,—­how, even when we endeavour to do good to others, our kindest actions are often represented as merely so many forms of self-interest and self-seeking,—­how our supposed ‘best’ friends often wrong us and listen credulously to enviously invented tales against us,—­how even in Love—­ah!-Love!—­that most etherial yet most powerful of passions!—­a rough word, an unmerited slight, may separate for a lifetime those whose love would otherwise have been perfect.  And still I climbed, and still I thought, and still the dark Phantom-Figure beckoned me on and on.

And then I began to consider that in climbing to some unknown, unseen height in deep darkness I was, after all, doing a wiser thing than living in the world with the ways of the world,—­ways that are for the most part purely hypocritical, and are practised merely to overreach and out-do one’s fellow-men and women—­ways of fashion, ways of society, ways of government which are merely temporary, while Nature, the invincible and eternal, moves on her appointed course with the same inborn intuition, namely, to destroy that which is evil and preserve only that which is good.  And Man, the sole maker of evil, the only opposer of Divine Order, fools himself into the belief that his evil shall prosper and his falsehood be accepted as truth, if he can only sham a sufficient show of religious faith to deceive himself and others on the ascending plane of History.  He who has invented Sin has likewise invented a God to pardon it, for there is no sin in the natural Universe.  The Divine Law cannot pardon, for it is inviolate and bears no trespass without punishment.