" I answered; "it might be nothing at all, and
I should still decline. I cannot afford to be impatient now and to
borrow knowledge of the future. I shall know all in good time."

He seemed not a little disappointed as I said this.

Then he made a final appeal: "Would you not wish to know even the
matter of your end?"

"No," I answered. "That is no temptation to me, for whatever it may be
I must find fortitude to undergo it somehow, whether I am to pass away
in my sleep in my bed, or whether I shall have to withstand the chances
of battle and murder and sudden death."

"That is your last word?" he inquired.

"I thank you again for what I have seen," I responded, bowing again;
"but my decision is final."

"Then I will detain you no longer," he said, haughtily, and he walked
towards the circling curtains and swept two of them aside. They draped
themselves back, and I saw before me an opening like that through which
I had entered.

I followed him, and the curtains dropped behind me as I passed into the
insufficiently illuminated passage beyond. I thought that the
mysterious being with whom I had been conversing had preceded me, but
before I had gone twenty paces I found that I was alone. I pushed
ahead, and my path twisted and turned on itself and rose and fell
irregularly like that by means of which I had made my way into the
unknown edifice. At last I picked my steps down winding stairs, and at
the foot I saw the outline of a door. I pushed it back, and I found
myself in the open air.

I was in a broad street, and over my head an electric light suddenly
flared out and white-washed the pavement at my feet. At the corner a
train of the elevated railroad rushed by with a clattering roar and a
trailing plume of white steam. Then a cable-car clanged past with
incessant bangs upon its gong. Thus it was that I came back to the
world of actuality.

I turned to get my bearings, that I might find my way home again. I was
standing almost in front of a shop, the windows of which were filled
with framed engravings.

One of these caught my eye, and I confess that I was surprised. It was
a portrait of a man--it was a portrait of the man with whom I had been
talking.

I went close to the window, that I might see it better. The electric
light emphasized the lines of the high-bred face, with its sombre
searching eyes and the air of old-world breeding. There could be no
doubt whatever that the original of this portrait was th