taught me, that it is given to none to help his neighbour. Heaven and Hell we make for ourselves, sometimes thinking Hell is Heaven, and Heaven Hell, and no man can unseal our eyes or divert our course. So you must go on your way, Kingston, and I on mine, neither seeing what the other sees, strangers speaking unintelligible tongues. And it will be long before you see what I have grown to see. And yet, in the distance of time, that day will come, and you will be healed of all your sorrows. But now, in this life of yours, for a test and a hell and a torment will be the gratification of your longing when it comes. As a trial and a condemnation of you and yours will it come, suddenly, with disaster and despair, and the possessing of it will bring an anguish bitterer than any that has gone before, for that is the unchanging law of Desire. So I have brought you my message and my vain warning. The force of your craving will bring about its own accomplishment, as, sooner or later, all longing must bring about its accomplishment, and, at the same time, its penalty. For a terrible moment you will see your wish made flesh again, then all will pass away into darkness, and your last state, through your own action, will be worse than the first.’ Kingston might, in saner circumstances, have smiled at denunciations so fantastic. But the little old man, so quiet yet so earnest, had a strange inexplicable dominance. He might not be believed, but he must at any rate be respected. In all he said there was a deep passion of earnestness, wistful and solemn, that gave the wizened little figure in the outrageous European clothes something of the prophet’s tragic grandeur. Now, his mission being discharged, the visitor arose to start once more on his way. Kingston, in the feeling that he had no real part in this earthly world, could make no effort to detain him. Nor would any effort have succeeded. As he had come, abruptly, unannounced, so he would go, abruptly, without mitigating gradation of farewells. Gently he gave his hand to Kingston. ‘Very far apart are we two,’ he said, with a whimsical smile of his dried lips. ‘We speak in different languages, across a barrier of worlds. Yet one day we shall draw together, and our hearts be made kin again. And now I must go. Say good-bye for me to your wife. Out of our passions we make whips for our own backs, and there are other passions besides that of love for others. She too, your wife, must pay the penalty that she has appointed for herself, and out of her fancied strength shall come the great weakness that shall impose on her, and you, and all, that punishment which wisdom would have helped you to avoid. None is good but he who does not know it.’