My heart sank a little, but I said nothing, and watched him as he took up the crystal globe, full of the darting lines and points of light gleaming like imprisoned fire, and held it for a moment between his two hands. Then he set it down again, and covered it as it had been covered before. The next moment he had extinguished the lamp, and we stood together in the pale brilliancy of the moonlight which now spread itself in a broad path of silver across the sea. The tide was coming in, and I heard the solemn sound of rising waves breaking rhythmically upon the shore. In silence Aselzion took me by the hand and led me through a low doorway out of the little hermitage into the open air, where we stood within a few feet of the sea. The moonbeams bathed us in a shower of pearly radiance, and I turned instinctively to look at my companion. His face appeared transfigured into something of supernatural beauty, and for one second the remembrance of how he had said in the chapel that he carried the burden of seventy years upon him flashed across me with a shock of surprise. Seventy years! He appeared to be in the very prime and splendour of life, and the mere idea of age as connected with him was absurd and incongruous. And while I gazed upon him, wondering and fascinated, he lifted one hand as though in solemn invocation to the stars that gleamed in their countless millions overhead, and his voice, deep and musical, rang out softly yet clearly on the silence:—
"O Supreme Guide of all the worlds created, accept this Soul which seeks to be consecrated unto Thee! Help her to attain to all that shall be for her wisdom and betterment, and make her one with that Nature whereof she is born. Thou, silent and peaceful Night, invest her with thy deep tranquillity!—thou, bright Moon, penetrate her spirit with the shining in of holy dreams!—give her of thy strength and depth, O Sea!—and may she draw from the treasures of the air all health, all beauty, all life, all sweetness, so that her existence may be a joy to the world, and her love a benediction! Amen!"
My whole being thrilled with a sense of keen rapture as he thus prayed for me,—I could have knelt to him in reverence but that I instinctively knew he would not wish this act of homage. I felt that it was best to keep silence, and I obeyed his guiding touch as, still holding my hand, he led me into a vaulted stone passage and up a long winding stair at the head of which he paused, and taking a key from his girdle, unlocked a small door.
"There is your room, my child,"—he said, with a grave kindliness which moved me strangely—"Farewell! The future is with yourself alone."
I clung to his hand for an instant.
"Shall I not see you again?" I asked, with a little tremor in my voice.
"Yes—you will see me again if you pass your ordeal successfully"—he answered—"Not if you fail."
"What will happen if I fail?"
"Nothing but the most ordinary circumstance,"—he answered—"You will leave this place in perfect safety and return to your home and your usual avocations,—you will live as most women live, perhaps on a slightly higher grade of thought and action—and in time you will come to look upon your visit to the House of Aselzion as the merest wilful escapade of folly! The world and its conventions will hold you—"
"Never!" I exclaimed, passionately—"Aselzion, I will not fail!"