I looked at him, and I suppose my looks expressed wonder or pity or both, for he averted his glance from mine.

“You are something of a spiritualist, I believe?”—­said Dr. Brayle, lifting his hard eyes from the scrutiny of the tablecloth and fixing them upon me.

“Not at all,”—­I answered, at once, and with emphasis.  “That is, if you mean by the term ‘spiritualist’ a credulous person who believes in mediumistic trickery, automatic writing and the like.  That is sheer nonsense and self-deception.”

“Several experienced scientists give these matters considerable attention,”—­suggested Mr. Swinton, primly.

I smiled.

“Science, like everything else, has its borderland,” I said—­“from which the brain can easily slip off into chaos.  The most approved scientific professors are liable to this dire end of their speculations.  They forget that in order to understand the Infinite they must first be sure of the Infinite in themselves.”

“You speak like an oracle, fair lady!”—­said Mr. Harland—­“But despite your sage utterances Man remains as finite as ever.”

“If he chooses the finite state certainly he does,”—­I answered—­“He is always what he elects to be.”

Mr. Harland seemed desirous of continuing the argument, but I would say no more.  The topic was too serious and sacred with me to allow it to be lightly discussed by persons whose attitude of mind was distinctly opposed and antipathetic to all things beyond the merely mundane.

After dinner, Miss Catherine professed herself to be suffering from neuralgia, and gathering up her shawls and wraps asked me to excuse her for going to bed early.  I bade her good-night, and, leaving my host and the two other men to their smoke, I went up on deck.  We were anchored off Mull, and against a starlit sky of exceptional clearness the dark mountains of Morven were outlined with a softness as of black velvet.  The yacht rested on perfectly calm waters, shining like polished steel,—­and the warm stillness of the summer night was deliciously soothing and restful.  Our captain and one or two of the sailors were about on duty, and I sat in the stern of the vessel looking up into the glorious heavens.  The tapering bow-sprit of the ‘Diana’ pointed aloft as it were into a woven web of stars, and I lost myself in imaginary flight among those glittering unknown worlds, oblivious of my material surroundings, and forgetting that despite the splendid evidences of a governing Intelligence in the beauty and order of the Universe spread about them every day, my companions in the journey of pleasure we were undertaking together were actually destitute of all faith in God, and had less perception of the existing Divine than the humblest plant may possess that instinctively forces its way upward to the light.  I did not think of this,—­it was no use thinking about it as I could not better the position,—­but I found myself curiously