Linton Herrick, losing not a day nor an hour in London, had carried the great news to Zenobia. Much that wired and wireless messages could not convey, he, as one of the inner circle, was in a position to explain. But the triumph of the Friends of the Ph?nix and the restoration of Wilson Renshaw did not exhaust the subject of their conversation. Linton was charged with an impressive and confidential message from Renshaw himself. The restored Minister entreated the daughter of the dead President to resort to no act of public reparation; he besought her to let the dead past hold its dead. The story of her father's crime need never be given in its fulness to a censorious world. Against his enemy the rescued rival nourished no resentful bitterness. His feeling, rather, was one of sorrow that the temptations of power and ambition and the weakness of human nature had wrought the moral ruin of a man in whom he had discerned many admirable and striking qualities. Zenobia Jardine was greatly moved. She recognised the nobility of Renshaw's attitude, but she still had misgivings as to her own path of duty. The messages reached her at a time when she was torn with conflicting feelings, bewildered by new sensations, impressed with new aspects of human life, agitated by complex thoughts and emotions to which[Pg 173] hitherto she had been a stranger. It was a crisis in her life. Subtle but masterful influences were at work upon her inmost being. Scales had failed, as it were, from her eyes, and her soul looked out upon possibilities of which in her unenlightened days she had never even dreamed. Love, duty, religion—each and all had acquired for her a deep and wonderful significance, and in her heart she feared to be presented with the problem of choice. Could these things be reconciled in the light of the revelation that had come to her? Would they be her armour and her strength wherewith she could go forward to some great predestined goal; or, if she chose the one, must she of necessity eschew the rest? One thing she knew for certain when she again held Linton's hand and looked into his face. This was the man she loved and always would love—stranger still, it seemed as if he were a man she always had loved. But she knew now of his daring, his fidelity, his narrow escape from death, and realised his clear, though unspoken devotion to herself.
And he, for his part, had known no peace until he found himself at her side again. Renshaw had placed at his disposal the Albatross, one of the swiftest of the Government air-ships, and another engineer had succeeded to the place of poor Wilton. Westwards he had rushed on the wings of the Albatross, leaving the lights of London, its crowded streets, its shouting and excited multitudes, far behind.
And now, side by side, he and Zenobia and Peter, her dog, engaged in dog-like explorations on the route, went slowly across the quaint bridge with its low-roofed shops that spans the Avon, and passed through the streets of ancient Bath.
"What would you do? What is your advice?" the[Pg 174] girl asked, turning to him suddenly. They had been silent for some time, but each knew well what occupied the other's thoughts. "Respect Renshaw's wishes," was Linton's firm reply.
"But the will—the confession is in the will," said Zenobia.
"The will need not be proved. With or without it, what your father left belongs to you, his sole next of kin."
She looked down thoughtfully. "It is your advice?" she asked, quietly.
"Yes, mine as well as his."
"Then I shall follow it."
When next they spoke it was upon another subject.
"This place strikes me oddly," said Linton, looking round as they went up the slopes of Victoria Park. "I have never been here before, and yet I have a curious feeling...."
She turned quickly. "How strange! I know what you are going to say."
"I believe you have the same feeling—as if we had been here before, you and I together, as if all that surrounds us were familiar."
"Is this the first time you have felt like this?" she asked eagerly.
"No, but I have never felt quite what I am feeling now." Again, with puzzled brow, he glanced round.
"Once," she went on, hesitatingly, "the first time we went up in the Bladud, you remember that night ...?"
"Yes, yes, I felt it then," cried Linton, pausing.
"And the other night," Zenobia continued, seriously, "when I looked from a window down on the lights of Bath I had a strange sensation as if it were a scene which I had always known, and after that I had a dream in which that feeling was confirmed."
"Curious," said Linton.
"Do you believe in the theory of pre-existence?"[Pg 175] she asked, abruptly, "do you think it possible that in some former state of being you and I or others can have met before?"
"It may be so," he answered gravely. "Wise men have held the theory. Who can limit the life of the ego—fix its beginning, or appoint its end?"
"If the breath of God is in us," said Zenobia solemnly, "all things must be possible. We, too, must be eternal. We may sleep and we may wake, but all the time we live. The soul does not belong to time, but to Eternity, and Eternity is an everlasting Now."
"Yes," said Linton, "why should not the spirit have an all............