"I was placing all the restraint I could on my manner, but I felt sick and giddy with the strain. At no time before had I loved this girl as now, when I had to leave her. She seemed to be conscious of this, but did not take the right way to help me, for coming nearer, and laying her hand on my arm, she said--
"'Alan, must you go? I want you to be near me. When you are by, I feel stronger and better, and oh! at times I am so lonely; the world seems so cold, so big, so evil, and I can trust you. Do stop, any way, till my husband comes back; that is the least you might do, considering that it was through your action we were parted.'
"'I dare not!' I answered. 'If it is pain to part now, how much worse it would be for me then! Can you not see also that it would be taking an unfair advantage of your husband? What I did at first, was done ignorantly, and it was necessary after that to undo as much of the evil as possible, but now I ought to go.'
"'Oh! I don't know what I shall do!' she cried, and the tears began to come into her eyes.
"I might have been excused for thinking that at last she loved me; but I was not mistaken, I knew her nature too well. Such a girl might weep upon her lover's neck, feeling for the moment as though her heart were breaking; and the next week under other influence throw him over for some one near at hand, with the most formal apology, and feeling hardly a sensation of pain. I felt sure that as soon as I had left, she would forget, but the knowledge did not bring, as perhaps it should have done, relief; rather it added to my pain. What hold could any one have upon such an undeveloped character? In all such cases we can only wait till the spirit is born. A flower is beautiful, we see it opening its delicate coloured petals in the sunlight; the fairy butterfly is hovering near, bearing the germ of fruition, but it passes by, and we must wait. As some blossoms, once as beautiful as their more fortunate neighbours, fall to the ground, having apparently missed, though we know not why, the purpose of their existence here, so some men and women live and die, having missed the object of their lives. The angel of love touches them not; he hovers near, they feel the breath from his wings, but the birth of the spirit is reserved for a future seed-time, and the harvest is a failure.
"I left Scotland, and after making the money arrangements referred to, threw my whole heart and mind into my work, trying to drown other thoughts by the interest which each added power brought. Up to this time, as you will have seen, my gift was a mixed blessing, half-developed, and therefore more likely to lead to evil than to good; but now I began to make progress, to feel my feet a little; every week brought new and startling discoveries, power which I had hardly dared to hope for; wisdom that humbled me to the dust. But as the story of my year's work abroad, and the events that happened to Vera during the same period in England will take me some time to relate, I shall leave them till your next visit. I have already tired you enough, we had better now rest a few hours, and if you like I will send you to sleep by telling a short fairy story. It has been a habit of mine since boyhood to mentally talk myself into dream-land, and without doubt you will find my tale have an equally soothing effect upon your own mind."
So I lay back, courting sleep, whilst Sydney told me this fairy story.
"In a world like, yet unlike, our own, might once have been found men fashioned as are the people of earth, save that they dwelt in profound silence; they heard neither the sweet singing of birds, nor the roar of their mighty torrents, nor the sweet murmuring of the streams. Communication of thought was carried from one to the other by the movement of the lips, by the sense of touch, or by writing; for though their world was full of sound, they as yet had not the gift of hearing. The time had not come when they should listen to the voices of the other spirits who wandered unseen in their midst, for the songs of the fairy folk contained much of the wisdom which it was better for the deaf and dumb to discover for themselves through the lessons of life. Yet at times, as the years rolled by, from every part of their world came messages of growing superstitions, of a professed consciousness of something which their written language failed clearly to convey, and of impressions which had been experienced, but which were outside the region of science. The wise men were greatly indignant at the growth of this seeming folly; they challenged the dreamers to appear before them, and prove the truth of their statements. Then one came forward, an old man, and he made signs to those around; and this was the interpretation--
"'Behold! as I stood among the hills, the heavens grew black around me, and great drops of rain fell on either side; out of these dark clouds there passed downwards to the earth a great fork-shaped flame which fell on a lofty tree; as it touched the great branches they split asunder, falling to the ground and leaving behind only a broken and shattered trunk.'
"And the wise men answered, 'Though such things happen but seldom, and in but few parts of the world, there is nothing new in what you have told us.'