He raised my hands lightly to his lips.
"That is kind of you!" he said—"and to-morrow you shall hear from me about Aselzion and the best way for you to see him. He is spending the summer in Europe, which is fortunate for you, as you will not have to make so far a journey."
We broke off our conversation here as the others joined us,—and in a very little while we had left the 'Dream' and were returning to our own yacht. To the last, as the motor launch rushed with us through the water, I kept my eyes fixed on the reposeful figure of Santoris, who with folded arms on the deck rail of his vessel, watched our departure. Should I never see him again, I wondered? What was the strange impulse that had more or less moved my spirit to a kind of opposition against his, and made me so determined to seek out for myself the things that he assumed to have mastered? I could not tell. I only knew that from the moment he had begun to relate the personal narrative of his own studies and experiences, I had resolved to go through the same training whatever it was, and learn what he had learned, if such a thing were possible. I did not think I should succeed so well,—but some new knowledge I felt I should surely gain. The extraordinary attraction he exercised over me was growing too strong to resist, yet I was determined not to yield to it because I doubted both its cause and its effect. Love, I knew, could not, as he had said, be analysed—but the love I had always dreamed of was not the love with which the majority of mankind are content—the mere physical delight which ends in satiety. It was something not only for time, but for eternity. Away from Santoris I found it quite easy to give myself up to the dream of joy which shone before me like the mirage of a promised land,—but in his company I felt as though something held me back and warned me to beware of too quickly snatching at a purely personal happiness.
We reached the 'Diana' in a very few minutes—we had made the little journey almost in silence, for my companions were, or appeared to be, as much lost in thought as I was. As we descended to our cabins Mr. Harland drew me back and detained me alone for a moment.
"Santoris is going away to-morrow," he said—"He will probably have set those wonderful sails of his and flown before daybreak. I'm sorry!"
"So am I," I answered—"But, after all—you would hardly want him to stay, would you? His theories of life are very curious and upsetting, and you all think him a sort of charlatan playing with the mysteries of earth and heaven! If he is able to read thoughts, he cannot be altogether flattered at the opinion held of him by Dr. Brayle, for example!"
Mr. Harland's brows knitted perplexedly.
"He says he could cure me of my illness," he went on,—"and Brayle declares that a cure is impossible."
"You prefer to believe Brayle, of course?" I queried.
"Brayle is a physician of note," he replied,—"A man who has taken his degree in medicine and knows what he is talking about. Santoris is merely a mystic."