Once out in the cool night-air, Julian Estcourt gave the rein to thought and memory. The march of events had been rapid. It seemed difficult to realise that he really stood in the light of an accepted lover to the woman who, but the previous day, he deemed at the other end of the world... difficult to realise that she loved him--and had loved him through all the blank, desolate years of absence and suffering they had both endured. Her warning came ever and again like a living voice across the fevered train of his thoughts. But he was no whit more inclined to listen to it here, in the calmness and soberness of solitude, than when her own lips had spoken it, and the charm of her own presence had swept away prudence and self-restraint. "It may not be wise," he said in his heart, "but I have not the strength to deny myself the only happiness I have ever pictured as possible. It is not as if I had frittered away my life on other women--on mere sensual pleasures. From my boyhood up to the present hour her power has been the same--her charm for me the same, I love her. That says all, and yet not half enough. Human nature is weak. I had dreamt of another life--of a higher and nobler field of duty, apart from the selfish joys that are inseparable from mere human ties--but I can yield that dream up without a regret. I can turn back from the threshold I have crossed... May there not be a purpose in our meeting like this--in the prospect of our union? If the time has come to teach, and to speak out boldly what has long been veiled in mysticism and doubt, where could a teacher so eloquent be found, or one whose natural gifts and loveliness could make those teachings of so much weight? and I--I, too, can help and protect her. Our souls need not descend from the spiritual level they have attained--they may meet and touch, and yet expand in the duality of perfect love and perfect comprehension. It is a glorious thought," and he lifted his eyes to the starry heights, that to him held all the mystery of peopled worlds--and were no mere pin-pricks of light, created to illuminate _one_. "A beautiful thought--God grant it may be realised!" But even as his eyes rested on the solemn splendour of the heavens--even as the human passions of the senses grew stilled beneath the loftier aspirations of the soul--even as that involuntary prayer sprang from heart to lips, some inner consciousness whispered like a warning voice--"_it cannot be_." He started as if that sound were audible. A cold and sudden terror swept over his body like a chilling wind. "Bah," he cried. "What a nervous fool I am! Is this all my love has done for me--made me like a frightened child, starting at shadows?" He turned abruptly, and went within to seek his own room. It was just midnight. Lights were being extinguished in the public rooms and corridors--silence and sleep were settling down upon the vast building.