He turned his eyes upon me, smiling, and took me gently by the hands.
"Who denies your right to go far if you have the strength and courage?"—he said—"Dear child, I have nothing to forgive! You are the maker of your own destiny! But you have been bold!—though you are a mere woman you have dared to do what few men attempt. This is the power of love within you—that perfect love which casteth out fear! You risked a danger which has not harmed you—you have come out of it unscathed,—so may it be with every ordeal through which you may yet be tried as by fire!"
He raised me from where I knelt,—but I still held his hands.
"I could not help it!" I said—"Your command for me was 'silence and solitude'—and in that silence and solitude I remained while I watched you all,—and I heard everything that was said—this was your wish and order. And when you all went away, the silence and solitude would have been the same but for that Cross and Star! THEY seemed to speak!—to call me—to draw me to them—and I went—hardly knowing why, yet feeling that I MUST go!—and then—"
Aselzion pressed my hands gently.
"Then the Light claimed its own,"—he said—"and courage had its reward! The door of your recess in the chapel was opened by my instructions,—I wished to see what you would do. You have no conception as yet of what you HAVE done!—but that does not matter. You have passed one test successfully—for had you remained passive in your place till someone came to remove you, I should have known you for a creature of weak will and transitory impulses. But you are stronger than I thought—so to-night I have come to give you your first lesson."
"My first lesson!" I repeated the words after him wonderingly as he let go my hands and put me gently into a chair which I had not perceived but which stood in the shadow cast by the lamp almost immediately opposite to him.
"Yes!—your first lesson!" he answered, smiling gravely—"The first lesson in what you have come here to learn,—the perpetuation of your life on earth for just so long as you desire it—the secret which gives to Rafel Santoris his youth and strength and power, as well as his governance over certain elemental forces. But first take this"—and he poured out from a quaintly shaped flask a full glass of deep red-coloured wine—"This is no magic potion—it is simply a form of nourishment which will be safer for you than solid food,—and I know you have eaten nothing all day since your light breakfast. Drink it all—every drop!"
I obeyed—it seemed tasteless and strengthless, like pure water.
"Now"—he continued—"I will put before you a very simple illustration of the truth which underlies all Nature. If you were taken into a vast plain, and there saw two opposing armies, the one actuated by a passion for destruction, the other moved only by a desire for good, you would naturally wish the latter force to win, would you not?"