I do not know how long I lay there lost to sight and sense, but when I
came to myself, I was in a quiet, shadowy place, like a kind of little
hermitage, with a window opening out upon the sea. I was lying on a
couch, with the veil I had worn still covering me, and as I opened my
eyes and looked about me I saw that it was night, and that the moon was
tracing a silver network of beams across the waves. There was a
delicious fragrance on the air--it came from a group of roses set in a
tall crystal vase close to where I lay. Then, as I gradually regained
full knowledge of my own existence, I perceived a table in the room
with a lamp burning upon it, and at the table sat no less a personage
than Aselzion himself, reading. I was so amazed at the sight of him
that for the moment I lay inert, afraid to move--for I was almost sure
I had incurred his displeasure--till suddenly, with the feeling of a
child seeking pardon for an offence, I sprang up and ran to him,
throwing myself on my knees at his feet.
"Aselzion, forgive me!" I murmured--"I have done wrong--I had no right
to go so far--"
He turned his eyes upon me, smiling, and took me gently by the hands.
"Who denies your right to go far if you have the strength and
courage?"--he said--"Dear child, I have nothing to forgive! You are the
maker of your own destiny! But you have been bold!--though you are a
mere woman you have dared to do what few men attempt. This is the power
of love within you--that perfect love which casteth out fear! You
risked a danger which has not harmed you--you have come out of it
unscathed,--so may it be with every ordeal through which you may yet be
tried as by fire!"
He raised me from where I knelt,--but I still held his hands.
"I could not help it!" I said--"Your command for me was 'silence and
solitude'--and in that silence and solitude I remained while I watched
you all,--and I heard everything that was said--this was your wish and
order. And when you all went away, the silence and solitude would have
been the same but for that Cross and Star! THEY seemed to speak!--to
call me--to draw me to them--and I went--hardly knowing why, yet
feeling that I MUST go!--and then--"
Aselzion pressed my hands gently.
"Then the Light claimed its own,"--he said--"and courage had its
reward! The door of your recess in the chapel was opened by my
instructions,--I wished to see what you would do. You have no
conception as yet of what you HAVE done!--but that does not matter. You
have passed one test successfully--for had you remained passive in your
place till someone came to remove you, I should have known you for a
creature of weak will and transitory impulses. But you are stronger
than I thought--so to-night I have come to give you your first lesson."
"My first lesson!" I repeated the words after him wonderingly as he let
go my hands and put me gently into a chair which I had not perceived
but which stood in the shadow cast by the lamp almost immediately
opposite to him.
"Yes!--your first lesson!" he answered, smiling gravely--"The first
lesson in what you have come here to learn,--the perpetuation of your
life on earth for just so long as you desire it--the secret which gives
to Rafel Santoris his youth and strength and power, as well as his
governance over certain elemental forces. But first take this"--and he
poured out from a quaintly shaped flask a full glass of deep
red-coloured wine--"This is no magic potion--it is simply a form of
nourishment which will be safer for you than solid food,--and I know
you have eaten nothing all day since your light breakfast. Drink it
all--every drop!"