“He seems to know where to find you, at all events,” I answered.  “He must have second sight to know you had been to Carisbrooke.”

“He has.  He is a very singular personage altogether.  However, he has done me more than one service before now, and though I do not comprehend his method of arriving at conclusions, still less his mode of locomotion, I am always glad of his advice.”

“But what is he?  Is he a Persian?—­you called him by an Indian name, but that may be a disguise—­is he a wise man from Iran?”

“He is a very wise man, but not from Iran.  No.  He is a Brahmin by birth, a Buddhist by adopted religion, and he calls himself an ‘adept’ by profession, I suppose, if he can be said to have any.  He comes and goes unexpectedly, with amazing rapidity.  His visits are brief, but he always seems to be perfectly conversant with the matter in hand, whatever it be.  He will come to-night and give me about twenty words of advice, which I may follow or may not, as my judgment dictates; and before I have answered or recovered from my surprise, he will have vanished, apparently into space; for if I ask my servants where he is gone they will stare at me as if I were crazy, until I show them that the room is empty, and accuse them of going to sleep instead of seeing who goes in and out of my apartment.  He speaks more languages than I do, and better.  He once told me he was educated in Edinburgh, and his perfect knowledge of European affairs and of European topics leads me to think he must have been there a long time.  Have you ever looked into the higher phases of Buddhism?  It is a very interesting study.”

“Yes, I have read something about it.  Indeed I have read a good deal, and have thought more.  The subject is full of interest, as you say.  If I had been an Asiatic by birth, I am sure I should have sought to attain moksha, even if it required a lifetime to pass through all the degrees of initiation.  There is something so rational about their theories, disclaiming, as they do, all supernatural power; and, at the same time, there is something so pure and high in their conception of life, in their ideas about the ideal, if you will allow me the expression, that I do not wonder Edwin Arnold has set our American transcendentalists and Unitarians and freethinkers speculating about it all, and wondering whether the East may not have had men as great as Emerson and Channing among its teachers.”  I paused.  My greatest fault is that if any one starts me upon a subject I know anything about, I immediately become didactic.  So I paused and reflected that Isaacs, being, as he himself declared, frequently in the society of an “adept” of a high class, was sure to know a great deal more than I.