‘Ha!’ he muttered to himself, as his eyes widened and sparkled with a look of intense eagerness and his hand shook, sending the light of the beautiful jewel all about the room, ’it is a sad pity he was not her son.  How I should have loved him then!  I like him now very much; but how I should have loved him then, for he is a brave boy.  Oh, if I had only been born brave like him!’ Then, suddenly recollecting himself, he closed his vest, and said:  ’Don’t tell your mother, Hal; don’t tell your mother that I have shown you this.’  Then he took it out again.  ‘She who is dead cherished it,’ he continued, half to himself—­’she cherished it above all things.  She died, boy, and I couldn’t help her.  She used to wear the cross in the bosom of her dress; and there she was in the cove kissing it when the tide swept over her.  I ought to have jumped down and died with her. You would have done it, Hal; your eyes say so.  Oh, to be an Aylwin without the Aylwin courage!’

After a little time he said:  ’This has lain on her bosom, Hal, her bosom!  It has been kissed by her, Hal, oh, a thousand thousand times!  It had her last kiss.  When I took it from the cold body which had been recovered, this cross seemed to be warm with her life and love.’

And then he wept, and his tears fell thick upon his bosom and upon the amulet.  The truth was clear enough now.  The appalling death of his first wife, his love for her, and his remorse for not having jumped down the cliff and died with her, had affected his brain.  He was a monomaniac, and all his thoughts were in some way clustered round the dominant one.  He had studied amulets because the ’Moonlight Cross’ had been cherished by her; he came to Switzerland every year because it was associated with her; he had joined the spiritualist body in the mad hope that perhaps there might be something in it, perhaps there might be a power that could call her back to earth.  Even the favourite occupation of his life, visiting cathedrals and churches and taking rubbings from monumental brasses, had begun after her death; it had come from the fact (as I soon learned) that she had taken interest in monumental brasses, and had begun the collection of rubbings.

And yet this martyr to a mighty passion bore the character of a dreamy student; and his calm, un-furrowed face, on common occasions, expressed nothing but a rather dull kind of content!  Here was a revelation of what, afterwards, was often revealed to me, that human personality is the crowning wonder of this wonderful universe, and that the forces which turn fire-mist into stars are not more inscrutable than is human character.  He lifted up his head and gazed at me through his tears.

‘Hal,’ he said, ’do you know why I have shown you this?  It must, MUST be buried with me at my death; and there is no one upon whose energy, truth, courage, and strength of will I can rely as I can upon yours.  You must give me your word, Hal, that you will see it and this casket containing her letters buried with me.’