His voice was calm and conventional, yet I thought I detected a thrill
of sadness in it which touched me to a kind of inexplicable remorse,
and I turned to him quickly, hardly conscious of the words I uttered.
"Must the glory fade?"--I said, almost pleadingly--"Why should it not
remain with us?"
He did not reply at once. A shadow of something like sternness clouded
his brows, and I began to be afraid--yet afraid of what? Not of
him--but of myself, lest I should unwittingly lose all I had gained.
But then the question presented itself--What had I gained? Could I
explain it, even to myself? There was nothing in any way tangible of
which to say--"I possess this," or "I have secured that,"--for,
reducing all circumstances to a prosaic level, all that I knew was that
I had met in my present companion a man who had a singular, almost
compelling attractiveness, and with whose personality I seemed to be
familiar; also, that under some power which he might possibly have
exerted, I had in an unexpected place and at an unexpected time seen
certain visions or 'impressions' which might or might not be the
working of my own brain under a temporary magnetic influence. I was
fully aware that such things could happen--and yet--I was not by any
means sure that they had so happened in this case. And while I was thus
hurriedly trying to think out the problem, he replied to my question.
"That depends on ourselves,"--he said--"On you perhaps more than any
other."