. But here the spell passed and I could not catch the
thoughts that had a moment before opened a long vista before my inner
vision.

"To tell you the truth," I concluded lamely, "the place fascinates me
and I am in two minds about going further--"

Even at this stage I remember thinking it odd that I should be talking
like this with a stranger whom I met in a country inn, for it has always
been one of my failings that to strangers my manner is brief to
surliness. It was as though we were figures meeting in a dream, speaking
without sound, obeying laws not operative in the everyday working world,
and about to play with a new scale of space and time perhaps. But my
astonishment passed quickly into an entirely different feeling when I
became aware that the old man opposite had turned his head from the
window again, and was regarding me with eyes so bright they seemed
almost to shine with an inner flame. His gaze was fixed upon my face
with an intense ardour, and his whole manner had suddenly become alert
and concentrated. There was something about him I now felt for the first
time that made little thrills of excitement run up and down my back. I
met his look squarely, but with an inward tremor.

"Stay, then, a little while longer," he said in a much lower and deeper
voice than before; "stay, and I will teach you something of the purpose
of my coming."

He stopped abruptly. I was conscious of a decided shiver.

"You have a special purpose then--in coming back?" I asked, hardly
knowing what I was saying.

"To call away someone," he went on in the same thrilling voice, "someone
who is not quite ready to come, but who is needed elsewhere for a
worthier purpose." There was a sadness in his manner that mystified me
more than ever.

"You mean--?" I began, with an unaccountable access of trembling.

"I have come for someone who must soon move, even as I have moved."

He looked me through and through with a dreadfully piercing gaze, but I
met his eyes with a full straight stare, trembling though I was, and I
was aware that something stirred within me that had never stirred
before, though for the life of me I could not have put a name to it, or
have analysed its nature. Something lifted and rolled away. For one
single second I understood clearly that the past and the future exist
actually side by side in one immense Present; that it was _I_ who moved
to and fro among shifting, protean appearances.

The old man dropped hi