"If that is your opinion, why go at all?" queried Heliobas, with a slight disdain in his accents. "Return to England instead--forget the name of 'Ardath,' and forget also the one who bade you meet her there, and who has waited for you 'these many thousand days!'" Alwyn started as if he had been stung. "Ah!" he exclaimed. "If I could be certain of seeing her again! ... if ... good God! the idea seems absurd! ... if that Flower-Crowned Wonder of my dream should actually fulfill her promise and keep her tryst ..." "Well!" demanded Heliobas--"If so, what then?" "Well then I will believe in anything!" he cried--"No miracle will seem miraculous.. no impossibility impossible!" Heliobas sighed, and regarded him thoughtfully. "You THINK you will believe!" he said somewhat sadly--"But doubts such as yours are not easily dispelled. Angels have ere now descended to men, men have neither received nor recognized them. Angels walk by our side through crowded cities and lonely woodlands,--they watch us when we sleep, they hear us when we pray, ... and yet the human eye sees nothing save the material objects within reach of its vision, and is not very sure of those, while it can no more discern the spiritual presences than it can without a microscope discern the lovely living creatures contained in a drop of dew or a ray of sunshine. Our earthly sight is very limited--it can neither perceive the infinitely little nor the infinitely great. And it is possible,--nay, it is most probable, that even as Peter of old denied his Divine Master, so you, if brought face to face with the Angel of your last night's experience, would deny and endeavor to disprove her identity." "Never!" declared Alwyn, with a passionate gesture--"I should know her among a thousand!" For one instant Heliobas bent upon him a sudden, searching, almost pitiful glance, then withdrawing his gaze he said gently: "Well, well! let us hope for the best--God's ways are inscrutable--and you tell me that now--now after your strange so-called 'vision'--you believe in God?" "I did say so, certainly..." and Alwyn's face flushed a little.. "but..."