'You have been faithful comrades to me,' he said at last, in a low, earnest voice, 'and it is time for you to know the whole truth. That you have not learned it from me before is only because I was myself not sure--only the upshot of this adventure could reveal the truth, and before I have finished you will confess that I had good reason for hesitating to speak out. It is enough to say that I knew I was more than I purported to be when I met you. Upon you I practised a deception which I have practised on the world at large--if deception it could be called. I told you my name was the rather humdrum British one of Saunders Philipson. That was the name I had adopted in England, where I was educated and became a naturalised Englishman. But I was not of English birth. I was born in Greece, near the modern city of Salonika, and was known to the people of that region as Alexandre Philipides. The surname had been borne by my family from very early times, and was held by us, among other evidences, to indicate our descent from the ancient kings. From my boyhood I had brooded deeply on the circumstance of my ancestry. I had also dreamed strange visions--I think your English expression "voices" would best describe these visitations--all of which seemed to tell me my destiny lay in the East, where some great mystery lay waiting to be revealed to me. Sometimes there would seem to be a voice speaking in my ear and calling to me, sometimes a human figure rose before my eyes, and once, gentlemen, I solemnly assure you that I dreamed a vision of the magnificent panorama of this valley exactly as it burst upon our view when we emerged from the mountains a few weeks ago. 'By the time I came to man's estate my impulse to travel in the East was irresistible, and my parents being then both dead, I set out on my quest. In my mind I had put together all the evidence of my visions, and it seemed to me that somewhere among these tremendous mountains lay the heart of the mystery which I was destined to discover. I explored the wild interior of Asia in a way that no other man living has done, and then at last I came upon that strange inscription of the obo. You already know how I secured an interpretation of it, and you need not be told of the exultation I felt when I recognised in it a solid confirmation of all that my visions had told me. Then, Mirlees, as if the gods were determined to aid me, they threw you in my path, and later, you, Poyning. Your help, I thought, would be precious, and if you will allow me to say so, I was not wrong in my expectations. I made known to both of you the secret of the obo, which I knew to be sound fact, but said nothing of my "voices," which, real as they were to me, might only have disposed you to believe you were dealing with a madman. Then again, at Nanking, I had a vision so vivid that it convinced me finally I was following no mere chimera; and again in the pass of the _obo_ came a visitation that I could not doubt.'