"Religious ideas! I! Not at all. I have a creed as I told you, but
it is an ugly one--not at all sentimental or agreeable. It is one
I have adopted from ancient Egypt."

"Explain it to me," said Gervase; "I will adopt it also, for your
sake."

"It is too supernatural for you," she said, paying no heed to the
amorous tone of his voice or the expressive tenderness of his
eyes.

"Never mind! Love will make me accept an army of ghosts, if
necessary."

"One of the chief tenets of my faith," she continued, "is the
eternal immortality of each individual Soul. Will you accept
that?"

"For the moment, certainly!"

Her eyes glowed like great jewels as she proceeded:

"The Egyptian cult I follow is very briefly explained. The Soul
begins in protoplasm without conscious individuality. It
progresses through various forms till individual consciousness is
attained. Once attained, it is never lost, but it lives on,
pressing towards perfection, taking upon itself various phases of
existence according to the passions which have most completely
dominated it from the first. That is all. But according to this
theory, you might have lived in the world long ago, and so might