Once again she laughed musically.
“Religious ideas! I! Not at all. I have a creed as I told you, but it is an ugly one—not at all sentimental or agreeable. It is one I have adopted from ancient Egypt.”
“Explain it to me,” said Gervase; “I will adopt it also, for your sake.”
“It is too supernatural for you,” she said, paying no heed to the amorous tone of his voice or the expressive tenderness of his eyes.
“Never mind! Love will make me accept an army of ghosts, if necessary.”
“One of the chief tenets of my faith,” she continued, “is the eternal immortality of each individual Soul. Will you accept that?”
“For the moment, certainly!”
Her eyes glowed like great jewels as she proceeded:
“The Egyptian cult I follow is very briefly explained. The Soul begins in protoplasm without conscious individuality. It progresses through various forms till individual consciousness is attained. Once attained, it is never lost, but it lives on, pressing towards perfection, taking upon itself various phases of existence according to the passions which have most completely dominated it from the first. That is all. But according to this theory, you might have lived in the world long ago, and so might I: we might even have met; and for some reason or other we may have become re-incarnated now. A disciple of my creed would give you that as the reason why you sometimes imagine you have seen me before.”
As she spoke, the dazed and troubled sensation he had once previously experienced came upon him; he laid down the canvas he held and passed his hand across his forehead bewilderedly.