Louis Grayle! Louis Grayle! All my earlier
memories go back to Louis Grayle! All my arts
and powers, all that I have learned of the
languages spoken in Europe, of the sciences
taught in her schools, I owe to Louis Grayle.
But am I one and the same with him! No. I am
but a pale reflexion of his giant intellect. I have
not even a reflexion of his childlike agonies of
sorrow. Louis Grayle! He stands apart from
me, as a rock from the tree that grows out from
its chasms. Yes, the gossip was right; I must
be his son."

He leant his face on both hands, rocking
himself to and fro. At length, with a sigh, he
resumed:

"I remember, too, a long and oppressive
illness, attended with racking pains; a dismal
journey in a wearisome litter, the light hand
of the woman Ayesha, so sad and so stately,
smoothing my pillow or fanning my brows. I
remember the evening on which my nurse drew
the folds of the litter aside, and said, 'See
Aleppo! and the star of thy birth shining over
its walls!'

"I remember a face inexpressibly solemn and
mournful. I remember the chill that the calm
of its ominous eye sent through my veins—the
face of Haroun, the Sage of Aleppo. I remember
the vessel of crystal he bore in his hand,
and the blessed relief from my pains that a drop
from the essence which flashed through the
crystal bestowed! And then—and then—I
remember no more till the night on which
Ayesha came to my couch and said, 'Rise.'

"And I rose, leaning on her, supported by
her. We went through dim narrow streets,
faintly lit by wan stars, disturbing the prowl of
the dogs, that slunk from the look of that
woman. We came to a solitary house, small
and low, and my nurse said, 'Wait.'

"She opened the door and went in; I seated
myself on the threshold. And after a time she
came out from the house, and led me, still leaning
on her, into a chamber.

"A man lay, as in sleep, on the carpet, and
beside him stood another man, whom I
recognised as Ayesha's special attendant—an
Indian. 'Haroun is dead,' said Ayesha. 'Search
for that which will give thee new life. Thou hast
seen, and wilt know it, not I.'

"And I put my hand on the breast of Haroun
—for the dead man was he—and drew from it
the vessel of crystal.

"Having done so, the frown on his marble
brow appalled me. I staggered back, and
swooned away.

"I came to my senses, recovered and rejoicing,
miles afar from the city, the dawn red on
its distant walls. Ayesha had tended me;
the elixir had already restored me.

"My first thought, when full consciousness
came back to me, rested on Louis Grayle, for he,
also, had been at Aleppo. I was but one of his
numerous train. He, too, was enfeebled and
suffering; he had sought the known skill of
Haroun for himself as for me; and this woman
loved and had tended him as she had loved and
tended me. And my nurse told me that he was
dead, and forbade me henceforth to breathe his
name.

"We travelled on—she and I, and the Indian,
her servant—my strength still renewed by the
wondrous elixir. No longer supported by her;
what gazelle ever roved through its pasture
with a bound more elastic than mine?

"We came to a town, and my nurse placed
before me a mirror. I did not recognise myself.
In this town we rested obscure, till the letter
there reached me by which I learned that I was
the offspring of love, and enriched by the care
of a father recently dead. Is it not clear that
Louis Grayle was this father?"

"If so, was the woman Ayesha your
mother?"

"The letter said that ' my mother had died
in my infancy.' Nevertheless, the care with
which Ayesha had tended me induced a suspicion
that made me ask her the very question you put.
She wept when I asked her, and said ' No, only
my nurse. And now I needed a nurse no more.'
The day after I received the letter which announced
an inheritance that allowed me to vie with the
nobles of Europe, this woman left me, and went
back to her tribe."

"Have you never seen her since?"

Margrave hesitated a moment, and then
answered, though with seeming reluctance, "Yes,
at Damascus. Not many days after I was borne
to that city by the strangers, who found me
half-dead on their road, I woke one morning to
find her by my side. And she said, 'In joy and in
health you did not need me. I am needed
now.'"

"Did you then deprive yourself of one so
devoted? You have not made this long voyage
—from Egypt to Australia—alone; you, to
whom wealth gave no excuse for privation?"

"The woman came with me; and some chosen
attendants. I engaged to ourselves the vessel
we sailed in."

"Where have you left your companions?"

"By this hour," answered Margrave, "they
are in reach of my summons; and when you and
I have achieved the discovery—in the results
of which we shall share—I will exact no more
from your aid. I trust all that rests for my cure
to my nurse and her swarthy attendants. You
will aid me now, as a matter of course; the
physician whose counsel you needed to guide
your own skill enjoins you to obey my whim—
if whim you still call it,—you will obey it, for on
that whim rests your own sole hope of happiness;
—you, who can love—I love nothing but life.
Has my frank narrative solved all the doubts
that stood between you and me, in the great
meeting-ground of an interest in common?"

"Solved all the doubts! Your wild story
but makes some the darker, leaving others
untouched; the occult powers of which you boast,
and some of which I have witnessed; your very
insight into my own household sorrows, into the
interest I have, with yourself, in the truth of a
faith so repugnant to reason——"

"Pardon me,"interrupted Margrave, with that