"YOU know more than I do!" I answered—"And I want to be equal with you! I do! I cannot be content to feel that I am groping in the dark weakly and blindly while you are in the light, strong and self-contained! You can help me—and you WILL help me! You will tell me where I should go and study as you did with Aselzion!"
He started back, amazed.
"With Aselzion! Dear, forgive me! You are a woman! It is impossible that you should suffer so great an ordeal,—so severe a strain! And why should you attempt it? If you would let me, I would be sufficient for you." "But I will not let you!" I said, quickly, roused to a kind of defiant energy—"I wish to go to the very source of your instruction, and then I shall see where I stand with regard to you! If I stay here now—"
"It will be the same old story over again!" he said—"Love—and mistrust! Then drifting apart in the same weary way! Is it not possible to avoid the errors of the past?"
"No!" I said, resolutely—"For me it is not possible! I cannot yield to my own inward promptings. They offer me too much happiness! I doubt the joy,—I fear the glory!"
My voice trembled—the very clasp of his hand unnerved me.
"I will tell you," he said, after a brief pause, "what you feel. You are perfectly conscious that between you and myself there is a tie which no power, earthly or heavenly, can break,—but you are living in a matter-of-fact world with matter-of-fact persons, and the influence they exert is to make you incredulous of the very truths which are an essential part of your spiritual existence. I understand all this. I understand also why you wish to go to the House of Aselzion, and you shall go—"
I uttered an exclamation of relief and pleasure. His eyes grew dark with earnest gravity as he looked at me.
"You are pleased at what you cannot realise," he said, slowly—"If you go to the House of Aselzion—and I see you are determined—it will be a matter of such vital import that it can only mean one of two things,—your entire happiness or your entire misery. I cannot contemplate with absolute calmness the risk you run,—and yet it is better that you should follow the dictates of your own soul than be as you are now—irresolute,—uncertain of yourself and ready to lose all you have gained!"
'To lose all I have gained.' The old insidious terror! I met his searching gaze imploringly.