I could only be sure that at least it was
not love. Having assured myself of this and being
certain that she was quite as whole-hearted, I ven-
tured one evening (I remember it was on the 3rd
of July) as we sat on deck to ask her, laughingly,
if she could assist me to resolve my psychological
doubt.
For a moment she was silent, with averted face,
and I began to fear I had been extremely rude and
indelicate; then she fixed her eyes gravely on my
own. In an instant my mind was dominated by as
strange a fancy as ever entered human conscious-
ness It seemed as if she were looking at me, not
with, but through, those eyes--from an immeas-
urable distance behind them--and that a number
of other persons, men, women and children, upon
whose faces I caught strangely familiar evanescent
expressions, clustered about her, struggling with gen-
tle eagerness to look at me through the same orbs.
Ship, ocean, sky--all had vanished. I was conscious
of nothing but the figures in this extraordinary and
fantastic scene. Then all at once darkness fell upon
me, and anon from out of it, as to one who grows
accustomed by degrees to a dimmer light, my former
surroundings of deck and mast and cordage slowly
resolved themselves. Miss Harford had closed her
eyes and was leaning back in her chair, apparently
asleep, the book she had been reading open in her
lap. Impelled by surely I cannot say what motive,
I glanced at the top of the page; it was a copy of
that rare and curious work, Denneker's Meditations,
and the lady's index finger rested on this passage:
'To sundry it is given to be drawn away, and to
be apart from the body for a season; for, as concern-
ing rills which would flow across each other the
weaker is borne along by the stronger, so there be
certain of kin whose paths intersecting, their souls
do bear company, the while their bodies go fore-
appointed ways, unknowing.
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