put the story down, or at least those parts of it that are most essential, for much can, or at any rate must be omitted. I shrink from; attempting too long a book, though my notes and memory would furnish me with sufficient material for volumes.
I will begin with the Vision.
After Leo Vincey and I came back from Africa in 1885, desiring solitude, which indeed we needed sorely to recover from the fearful shock we had experienced, and to give us time and opportunity to think, we went to an old house upon the shores of Cumberland that has belonged to my family for many generations. This house, unless somebody has taken it believing me to be dead, is still my property and thither I travel to die.
Those whose eyes read the words I write, if any should ever read them, may ask—What shock?
Well, I am Horace Holly, and my companion, my beloved friend, my son in the spirit whom I reared from infancy was—nay, is—Leo Vincey.
We are those men who, following an ancient clue, travelled to the Caves of Kôr in Central Africa, and there discovered her whom we sought, the immortal She-who-must-be-obeyed.
In Leo she found her love, that re-born Kallikrates, the Grecian priest of Isis whom some two thousand years before she had slain in her jealous rage, thus executing on him the judgment of the angry goddess. In her also I found the divinity whom I was doomed to worship from afar, not with the flesh, for that is all lost and gone from me, but, what is sorer still, because its burden is undying, with the will and soul which animate a man throughout the countless aeons of his being. The flesh dies, or at least it changes, and its passions pass, but that other passion of the spirit—that longing for oneness—is undying as itself.
What crime have I committed that this sore punishment should be laid upon me? Yet, in truth, is it a punishment?
