His voice thrilled—­and again he took my hand and held it gently clasped.

“You must believe in yourself alone,”—­he said,—­“if any lurking thought suggests a disbelief in me!  It is quite natural that you should doubt me a little.  You have studied long and deeply—­you have worked hard at problems which puzzle the strongest man’s brain, and you have succeeded in many things because you have kept what most men manage to lose when grappling with Science,—­Faith.  You have always studied with an uplifted heart—­uplifted towards the things unseen and eternal.  But it has been a lonely heart, too,—­as lonely as mine!”

A moment’s silence followed,—­a silence that seemed heavy and dark, like a passing cloud, and instinctively I looked up to see if indeed a brooding storm was not above us.  A heaven of splendid colour met my gaze—­the whole sky was lighted with a glory of gold and blue.  But below this flaming radiance there was a motionless mass of grey vapour, hanging square as it seemed across the face of the lofty mountain at the head of the lake, like a great canvas set ready for an artist’s pencil and prepared to receive the creation of his thought.  I watched this in a kind of absorbed fascination, conscious that the warm hand holding mine had strengthened its close grasp,—­ when suddenly something sharp and brilliant, like the glitter of a sword or a forked flash of lightning, passed before my eyes with a dizzying sensation, and the lake, the mountains, the whole landscape, vanished like a fleeting mirage, and in all the visible air only the heavy curtain of mist remained.  I made an effort to move—­to speak—­in vain!  I thought some sudden illness must have seized me—­yet no!—­for the half-swooning feeling that had for a moment unsteadied my nerves had already passed—­and I was calm enough.  Yet I saw more plainly than I have ever seen anything in visible Nature, a slowly moving, slowly passing panorama of scenes and episodes that presented themselves in marvellous outline and colouring,—­pictures that were gradually unrolled and spread out to my view on the grey background of that impalpable mist which like a Shadow hung between myself and impenetrable Mystery, and I realised to the full that an eternal record of every life is written not only in sound, but in light, in colour, in tune, in mathematical proportion and harmony,—­and that not a word, not a thought, not an action is forgotten!

A vast forest rose before me.  I saw the long shadows of the leafy boughs flung thick upon the sward and the wild tropical vines hanging rope-like from the intertwisted stems.  A golden moon looked warmly in between the giant branches, flooding the darkness of the scene with rippling radiance, and within its light two human beings walked,—­a man and woman—­their arms round each other,—­their faces leaning close together.  The man seemed pleading with his companion for some favour which she withheld, and presently she drew herself away