cription. I could guide your observation to distinguish them
unerringly were living subjects before us. But not one in a million has
the gift to an extent available for the purposes to which the wise would
apply it. Many have imperfect glimpses; few, few indeed, the unveiled,
lucent sight. They who have but the imperfect glimpses mislead and
dupe the minds that consult them, because, being sometimes marvellously
right, they excite a credulous belief in their general accuracy; and as
they are but translators of dreams in their own brain, their assurances
are no more to be trusted than are the dreams of commonplace sleepers.
But where the gift exists to perfection, he who knows how to direct and
to profit by it should be able to discover all that he desires to know
for the guidance and preservation of his own life. He will be forewarned
of every danger, forearmed in the means by which danger is avoided.
For the eye of the true Pythoness matter has no obstruction, space no
confines, time no measurement."

"My dear Margrave, you may well say that creatures so gifted are rare;
and, for my part, I would as soon search for a unicorn, as, to use your
affected expression, for a Pythoness."

"Nevertheless, whenever there come across the course of your practice
some young creature to whom all the evil of the world is as yet unknown,
to whom the ordinary cares and duties of the world are strange and
unwelcome; who from the earliest dawn of reason has loved to sit apart
and to muse; before whose eyes visions pass unsolicited; who converses
with those who are not dwellers on the earth, and beholds in the space
landscapes which the earth does not reflect--"

"Margrave, Margrave! of whom do you speak?"

"Whose frame, though exquisitely sensitive, has still a health and
a soundness in which you recognize no disease; whose mind has a
truthfulness that you know cannot deceive you, and a simple intelligence
too clear to deceive itself; who is moved to a mysterious degree by
all the varying aspects of external nature,--innocently joyous,
or unaccountably sad,--when, I say, such a being comes across your
experience, inform me; and the chances are that the true Pythoness is
found."

I had listened with vague terror, and with more than one exclamation of
amazement, to descriptions which brought Lilian Ashleigh before me;
and I now sat mute, bewildered, breathless, gazing upon Margrave, and
rejoicing that, at least, Lilian he had never see