e not intended to know anything about."

"I might ask you," said the stranger, with visible contempt, "how you
are so surely convinced of what we are intended to know, and what not?
There is no hard and fast rule laid down for us that I am aware of."

"Oh!" stammered Mrs Jefferson, with some confusion, "I'm sure the Bible
says that somewhere. `Thus far shalt thou go and no further,' you know.
It is arrogant to attempt to penetrate the mysteries of the other
world. When we go there we shall know them soon enough."

"How glibly you nineteenth-century Christians talk of the `other
world,'" cried the beautiful woman, with contempt. She tossed back the
weight of her rich hair and sat up, looking like an inspired prophetess.
"Yet you acknowledge you know nothing of it. Your priests cannot
explain it, so they take refuge in the plea that inquiry is
presumptuous. Science cannot explain it. Reason falters at the
threshold before the stumbling-block of its long-cherished ignorance
whose only legacy has been Fear. And it is all because you live in
falsehood--because you are false to your _inner_ life, and think only of
the outer; because you are all in chains of superstition--of worldly
bondage, of family prejudices, and, above all, of self-delusion."

"Have you come to preach to us, then?" asked the little American
superciliously. "There is little use in decrying a private or national
disease unless you are provided with a remedy."

"If an angel from Heaven came down to preach you would not believe!"
said the stranger, growing suddenly calm as she sank back on her pillow.
"No, I have no mission. I am only one who has looked out on life and
learnt its bitter truths, and seen its vanity and folly repeated, with
scarce a variation, in countless human lives."

"Well," said the American, "the fact of that repetition seems rather as
if it were a law of human lives, don't it? We find ourselves in this
world, and we must do as others do, and live as others live. Of course,
I've read of people giving up all sorts of pleasures and comforts in
this life for sake of another, but to me it seems only a mild form of
madness. For instance, there's this new sect that's sprung up, who are
going to revolutionise all creation--well, I've read heaps of their
books, I've spoken even to some of their members, but I confess
Theosophy seems as much of a jumble as any other creed. Look at their
priests, their _yogis_, and _chelas_, and s