So far the story was sad enough, but hardly romantic.  I clasped the hand of the narrator, and assured him warmly of my sympathy, adding, with as little appearance of curiosity as I could command:—­

“And your object in coming back is only, then, to—­to—­be near the scene of your great trouble?”

“No, Mr Roy; that is not the motive of my journey.  I do not believe either that my boy’s corpse lies concealed among the grasses of the plateau, or that it was swept away, as has been suggested, by the mountain cataract.  Neither hypothesis seems to me tenable.  The bed of the stream was followed and searched for miles; and though, when he fell, he was carrying over his shoulder a flask and a thick fur-lined cloak,—­for we expected cold on the heights, and went provided against it,—–­not a fragment of anything belonging to him was found.  Had he fallen into the torrent, it is impossible his clothing should not have become detached from the body and caught by the innumerable rocks in the shallow parts of the stream.  But that is not all.  I have another reason for the belief I cherish.”  He leaned forward, and added in firmer and slower tones:  “I am convinced that my boy still lives, for—­I have seen him.”

“You have seen him!” I cried.

“Yes; again and again—­in dreams.  And always in the same way, and with the same look.  He stands before me, beckoning to me, and making signs that I should come and help him.  Not once or twice only, but many times, night after night I have seen the same thing!”

Poor father!  Poor desolate man!  Not the first driven distraught by grief; not the first deluded by the shadows of love and longing!

“You think I am deceived by hallucinations,” he said, watching my face.”  It is you who are misled by the scientific idiots of the day, the wiseacres who teach us to believe, whenever soul speaks to soul, that the highest and holiest communion attainable by man is the product of physical disease!  Forgive me the energy of my words; but had you loved and lost your beloved—–­wife and child—­as I have done, you would comprehend the contempt and anger with which I regard those modern teachers whose cold and ghastly doctrines give the lie, not only to all human hopes and aspirations towards the higher life, but also to the possibility of that very progress from lower to nobler forms which is the basis of their own philosophy, and to the conception of which the idea of the soul and of love are essential!  Evolution presupposes possible perfecting, and the conscious adaptation of means to ends in order to attain it.  And both the ideal itself and the endeavour to reach it are incomprehensible without desire, which is love, and whose seat is in the interior self, the living soul—­the maker of the outward form!”

He was roused from his melancholy now, and spoke connectedly and with enthusiasm.  I was about to reassure him in regard to my own philosophical convictions, the soundness of which he seemed to question, when his voice sank again, and he added earnestly:—­