“Of course!” and Santoris leaned back in his chair easily, as though at once dismissing the subject from his mind—­“A man born blind must needs decline to believe in the pleasures of sight.”

Harland’s wrinkled brow deepened its furrows in a frown.

“Do you mean to tell me,—­do you dare to tell me”—­he said—­“that you see any ‘aura,’ as you call it, round my personality?”

“I do, most assuredly,”—­answered Santoris—­“I see it as distinctly as I see yourself in the midst of it.  But there is no actual light in it,—­it is mere grey mist,—­a mist of miasma.”

“Thank you!” and Harland laughed harshly—­“You are complimentary!”

“Is it a time for compliments?” asked Santoris, with sudden sternness—­“Harland, would you have me tell you all?”

Harland’s face grew livid.  He threw up his hand with a warning gesture.

“No!” he said, almost violently.  He clutched the arm of his chair with a nervous grip, and for one instant looked like a hunted creature caught red-handed in some act of crime.  Recovering himself quickly, he forced a smile.

“What about our little friend’s ’aura’?"-he queried, glancing at me--"Does she ‘express’ herself in radiance?”

Santoris did not reply for a moment.  Then he turned his eyes towards me almost wistfully.

“She does!”—­he answered—­“I wish you could see her as I see her!”

There was a moment’s silence.  My face grew warm, and I was vaguely embarrassed, but I met his gaze fully and frankly.

“And I wish I could see myself as you see me,”—­I said, half laughingly—­“For I am not in the least aware of my own aura.”

“It is not intended that anyone should be visibly aware of it in their own personality,”—­he answered—­“But I think it is right we should realise the existence of these radiant or cloudy exhalations which we ourselves weave around ourselves, so that we may ’walk in the light as children of the light.’”

His voice sank to a grave and tender tone which checked Mr. Harland in something he was evidently about to say, for he bit his lip and was silent.

I rose from my chair and moved away then, looking—­from the smooth deck of the ‘Dream’ shadowed by her full white sails out to the peaks of the majestic hills whose picturesque beauties are sung in the wild strains of Ossian, and the projecting crags, deep hollows and lofty pinnacles outlining the coast with its numerous waterfalls, lochs and shadowy creeks.  A thin and delicate haze of mist hung over the land like a pale violet veil through which the sun shot beams of rose and gold, giving a vaporous unsubstantial effect to the scenery as though it were gliding with us like a cloud pageant on the surface of the calm water.  The shores of Loch Scavaig began to be dimly seen in the distance, and presently Captain Derrick approached Mr. Harland, spy-glass in hand.

“The ‘Diana’ must have gone for a cruise,”—­he said, in rather a perturbed way—­“As far as I can make out, there’s no sign of her where we left her this morning.”