irritation.

"No, Bickley; but then I have always understood that the devil
is beyond conversion because he is beyond repentance. You see, I

think that if that old scoundrel was not the devil himself, at
any rate he was a bit of him, and, if I am right, I am not

ashamed to have failed in his case."
"Even Oro was not utterly bad, Bastin," I said, reflecting on

certain traits of mercy that he had shown, or that I dreamed him
to have shown in the course of our mysteriousmidnight journeys

to various parts of the earth. Also I remembered that he had
loved Tommy and for his sake had spared our lives. Lastly, I do

not altogether wonder that he came to certain hasty conclusions
as to the value of our modern civilisations.

"I am very glad to hear it, Humphrey, since while there is a
spark left the whole fire may burn up again, and I believe that

to the Divine mercy there are no limits, though Oro will have a
long road to travel before he finds it. And now I have something

to say. It has troubled me very much that I was obliged to leave
those Orofenans wandering in a kind of religious twilight."

"You couldn't help that," said Bickley, "seeing that if you had
stopped, by now you would have been wandering in religious

light."
"Still, I am not sure that I ought not to have stopped. I seem

to have deserted a field that was open to me. However, it can't
be helped, since it is certain that we could never find that

island again, even if Oro has not sunk it beneath the sea, as he
is quite capable of doing, to cover his tracks, so to speak. So I

mean to do my best in another field by way of atonement."
"You are not going to become a missionary?" I said.

"No, but with the consent of the Bishop, who, I think, believes
that my locum got on better in the parish than I do, as no doubt

was the case, I, too, have volunteered for the Front, and been
accepted as a chaplain of the 201st Division."

"Why, that's mine!" said Bickley.
"Is it? I am very glad, since now we shall be able to pursue

our pleasant arguments and to do our best to open each other's
minds."

"You fellows are more fortunate than I am," I remarked. "I also
volunteered, but they wouldn't take me, even as a Tommy, although

I misstated my age. They told me, or at least a specialist whom I
saw did afterwards, that the blow I got on the head from that

sorcerer's boy--"
"I know, I know!" broke in Bickley almost roughly. "Of course,

things might go wrong at any time. But with care you may live to
old age."

"I am sorry to hear it," I said with a sigh, "at least I think
I am. Meanwhile, fortunately there is much that I can do at home;

indeed a course of action has been suggested to me by an old
friend who is now in authority."

Once more Bickley and Bastin in their war-stained uniforms were
dining at my table and on the very night of their return from the

Front, which was unexpected. Indeed Tommy nearly died of joy on
hearing their voices in the hall. They, who played a worthy part

in the great struggle, had much to tell me, and naturally their
more recent experiences had overlaid to some extent those which

we shared in the mysterious island of Orofena. Indeed we did not
speak of these until, just as they were going away, Bastin paused

beneath a very beautiful portrait of my late wife, the work of an
artist famous for his power of bringing out the inner character,

or what some might call the soul, of the sitter. He stared at it
for a while in his short-sighted way, then said: "Do you know,

Arbuthnot, it has sometimes occurred to me, and never more than
at this moment, that although they were different in height and

so on, there was a really curious physicalresemblance between
your late wife and the Lady Yva."

"Yes," I answered. "I think so too."
Bickley also examined the portrait very carefully, and as he

did so I saw him start. Then he turned away, saying nothing.
Such is the summary of all that has been important in my life.

It is, I admit, an odd story and one which suggests problems that
I cannot solve. Bastin deals with such things by that acceptance

which is the privilege and hall-mark of faith; Bickley disposes,
or used to dispose, of them by a blank denial which carries no

conviction, and least of all to himself.
What is life to most of us who, like Bickley, think ourselves

learned? A round, short but still with time and to spare wherein
to be dull and lonesome; a fateful treadmill to which we were

condemned we know not how, but apparently through the casual
passions of those who went before us and are now forgotten,

causing us, as the Bible says, to be born in sin; up which we
walk wearily we know not why, seeming never to make progress; off

which we fall outworn we know not when or whither.
Such upon the surface it appears to be, nor in fact does our

ascertained knowledge, as Bickley would sum it up, take us much
further. No prophet has yet arisen who attempted to define either

the origin or the reasons of life. Even the very Greatest of them
Himself is quite silent on this matter. We are tempted to wonder

why. Is it because life as expressed in the higher of human
beings, is, or will be too vast, too multiform and too glorious

for any definition which we could understand? Is it because in
the end it will involve for some, if not for all, majesty on

unfathomed majesty, and glory upon unimaginable glory such as at
present far outpass the limits of our thought?

The experiences which I have recorded in these pages awake in
my heart a hope that this may be so. Bastin is wont, like many

others, to talk in a light fashion of Eternity without in the
least comprehending what he means by that gigantic term. It is

not too much to say that Eternity, something without beginning
and without end, and involving, it would appear, an everlasting

changelessness, is a state beyond human comprehension. As a
matter of fact we mortals do not think in constellations, so to

speak, or in aeons, but by the measures of our own small earth and
of our few days thereon. We cannot really conceive of an

existence stretching over even one thousand years, such as that
which Oro claimed and the Bible accords to a certain early race

of men, omitting of course his two thousand five hundred
centuries of sleep. And yet what is this but one grain in the

hourglass of time, one day in the lost record of our earth, of
its sisters the planets and its father the sun, to say nothing of

the universes beyond?
It is because I have come in touch with a prolonged though

perfectly finite existence of the sort, that I try to pass on the