I raised my eyes and saw the purple shadows being cloven and scattered one after another, by long rays of late sunshine that poured like golden wine through the dividing wreaths of vapour,—­ above, the sky was pure turquoise blue, melting into pale opal and emerald near the line of the grey sea which showed little flecks of white foam under the freshening breeze.  Bringing my gaze down from the dazzling radiance of the heavens, I turned towards Mr. Harland and was startled and shocked to see the drawn and livid pallor of his face and the anguish of his expression.

“You are ill!” I exclaimed, and springing up in haste I offered him my chair—­“Do sit down!”

He made a mute gesture of denial, and with slow difficulty drew another chair up beside mine, and dropped into it with an air of heavy weariness.

“I am not ill now,”—­he said—­“A little while ago I was very ill.  I was in pain—­horrible pain!  Brayle did what he could for me—­it was not much.  He says I must expect to suffer now and again—­until—­ until the end.”

Impulsively I laid my hand on his.

“I am very sorry!” I said, gently—­“I wish I could be of some use to you!”

He looked at me with a curious wistfulness.

“You could, no doubt, if I believed as you do,”—­he replied, and then was silent for a moment.  Presently he spoke again.

“Do you know I am rather disappointed in you?”

“Are you?” And I smiled a little—­“Why?”

He did not answer at once.  He seemed absorbed in troubled musings.  When he resumed, it was in a low, meditative tone, almost as if he were speaking to himself.

“When I first met you—­you remember?—­at one of those social ‘crushes’ which make the London season so infinitely tedious,—­I was told you were gifted with unusual psychic power, and that you had in yourself the secret of an abounding exhaustless vitality.  I repeat the words—­an abounding exhaustless vitality.  This interested me, because I know that our modern men and women are mostly only half alive.  I heard of you that it did people good to be in your company,—­that your influence upon them was remarkable, and that there was some unknown form of occult, or psychic science to which you had devoted years of study, with the result that you stood, as it were, apart from the world though in the world.  This, I say, is what I heard—­”

“But you did not believe it,”—­I interposed.

“Why do you say that?” he asked, quickly.

“Because I know you could not believe it,”—­I answered—­“It would be impossible for you.”

A gleam of satire flashed in his sunken eyes.

“Well, you are right there!  I did not believe it.  But I expected—­”

“I know!” And I laughed—­“You expected what is called a ‘singular’ woman—­one who makes herself ‘singular,’ adopts a ‘singular’ pose, and is altogether removed from ordinary humanity.  And of course you are disappointed.  I am not at all a type of the veiled priestess.”