ould
return with a Japanese, or perhaps a Chinese wife.

But I did not go to Japan; and what prevented me?

My reason told me that what I had just seen near Beddgelert was an
optical illusion. I had become very learned on the subject of optical
illusions ever since I had known Sinfi Lovell, and especially since I
had seen that picture of Winnie in the water near Bettws y Coed,
which I have described in an earlier chapter. Every book I could get
upon optical illusions I had read, and I was astonished to find how
many instances are on record of illusions of a much more powerful
kind than mine.

And yet I could not leave Snowdon. The mountain's very breath grew
sweeter and sweeter of Winnie's lips. As I walked about the hills I
found myself repeating over and over again one of the verses which
Winnie used to sing to me as a child at Raxton.

Eryri fynyddig i mi,
Bro dawel y delyn yw,
Lle mae'r defaid a'r wyn,
Yn y mwswg a'r brwyn,
Am can inau'n esgyn i fyny,
A'r gareg yn ateb i fyny, i fyny,
O'r lle bu'r eryrod yn byw. [Footnote]

[Footnote:

Mountain-wild Snowdon for me!
Sweet silence there for the harp,
Where loiter the ewes and the lambs,
In the moss and the rushes,
Where one's song goes sounding up
And the rocks re-echo it higher and higher
In the height where the eagles live.]

But then I felt that Sinfi was the mere instrument of the mysterious
magic of y Wyddfa, that magic which no other mountain in Europe
exercises. I knew that among all the Gypsies Sinfi was almost the
only one who possessed that power which belonged once to her race,
that power which is expressed in a Scottish word now universally
misused, 'glamour,' the power which Johnnie Faa and his people
brought into play when they abducted Lady Casilis.

Soon as they saw her well-faured face
They cast the glamour oure her.

'Yes,' I said, 'I am convinced that my illusion is the result of two
causes, my own brooding over Winnie's tragedy and the glamour that
Sinfi sheds around her, either consciously or unconsciously; that
imperious imagination of hers which projects her own visions upon the
senses of another person either with or without an exercise of her
own will. This is the explanation, I am convinced.'

Wheresoever I now went, Snowdon's message to my heart was, 'She
lives,' and my heart accepted the message. A