“Do not be afraid,”—­he continued, in the same quiet tone—­“It is true that we must be careful now as in the past we were careless,—­ but perfect comprehension of each other rests with ourselves.  May I go on?”

I gave a mute sign of assent.  There was a rough craig near us, curiously shaped like a sort of throne and canopy, the canopy being formed by a thickly overhanging mass of rock and heather, and here he made me sit down, placing himself beside me.  From this point we commanded a view of the head of the lake and the great mountain which closes and dominates it,—­and which now began to be illumined with a strange witch-like glow of orange and purple, while a thin mist moved slowly across it like the folds of a ghostly stage curtain preparing to rise and display the first scene of some great drama.

“Sometimes,” he then said,—­“it happens, even in the world of cold and artificial convention, that a man and woman are brought together who, to their own immediate consciousness, have had no previous acquaintance with each other, and yet with the lightest touch, the swiftest glance of an eye, a million vibrations are set quivering in them like harp-strings struck by the hand of a master and responding each to each in throbbing harmony and perfect tune.  They do not know how it happens—­they only feel it is.  Then, nothing—­I repeat this with emphasis—­nothing can keep them apart.  Soul rushes to soul,—­ heart leaps to heart,—­and all form and ceremony, custom and usage crumble into dust before the power that overwhelms them.  These sudden storms of etheric vibration occur every day among the most ordinary surroundings and with the most unlikely persons, and Society as at present constituted frowns and shakes its head, or jeers at what it cannot understand, calling such impetuosity folly, or worse, while remaining wilfully blind to the fact that in its strangest aspect it is nothing but the assertion of an Eternal Law.  Moreover, it is a law that cannot be set aside or broken with impunity.  Just as the one point of vibration sympathetically strikes the other in the system of wireless telegraphy, so, despite millions and millions of intervening currents and lines of divergence, the immortal soul-spark strikes its kindred fire across a waste of worlds until they meet in the compelling flash of that God’s Message called Love!”

He paused—­then went on slowly:—­

“No force can turn aside one from the other,—­nothing can intervene--not because it is either romance or reality, but simply because it is a law.  You understand?”

I bent my head silently.

“It may be thousands of years before such a meeting is consummated,”—­he continued—­“For thousands of years are but hours in the eternal countings.  Yet in those thousands of years what lives must be lived!—­what lessons must be learned!—­what sins committed and expiated!—­what precious time lost or found!—­what happiness missed or wasted!”