and he is truthful and sincere."

I have given this in a continuous speech, much as Arthur told it me
a few months ago, though it was the essence of a conversation. The
quiet man, with his dreamy eyes fixed on his face, he told me, and
the fragrant Eastern garden seemed from moment to moment of the
strange adventure to swim and become vague and phantasmal; but again
the quiet air of certainty with which questions were asked and
statements made gave him a curious sense of security, and an impulse
to accept the indicated path, together with a sense of shrinking from
such a responsibility.

"I do not, as I told you," said the other, "want your answer now, but
this day one year hence, August 19, 1879, I shall claim it. And I
have no doubt," he added with a smile, "of what that answer will be.
But I beg of you do not give the question a hasty consideration and
then reverse your decision. Do not attempt to decide. Let your choice
be guided by circumstances; they are the safest guide, for they are
not of our own making.

"I do not suppose," he continued, "that I shall ever see you again on
earth, as you proceed with your journey to-morrow; and indeed I think
it will perhaps be as well that this should be our last conversation,
so that nothing else should interfere to blur the impression.

"One last word then." He paused for a moment, and the stillness was
broken only by the faintest stir of odorous wind among the
spice-trees and a waft of distant evening noises.

"You are treading a path, though you do not realize it, which it is