ving followed up my application, it
appears not to have been attended to. It has been my own fault."

"And now it is too late."

"Yes, dearest, most assuredly so: but it matters not; I would as
willingly, perhaps rather, sail this voyage as first mate."

"Philip, I may as well speak now. That I am disappointed, I must
confess; I fully expected that you would have had the command of a
vessel, and you may remember that I exacted a promise from you on this
very bank upon which we now sit, at the time that you told me your
dream. That promise I shall still exact, and I now tell you what I had
intended to ask. It was, my dear Philip, permission to sail with you.
With you, I care for nothing. I can be happy under every privation or
danger; but to be left alone for so long, brooding over my painful
thoughts, devoured by suspense, impatient, restless, and incapable of
applying to any one thing--that, dear Philip, is the height of misery,
and that is what I feel when you are absent. Recollect, I have your
promise, Philip. As captain, you have the means of receiving your wife
on board. I am bitterly disappointed in being left this time; do,
therefore, to a certain degree, console me by promising that I shall
sail with you next voyage, if Heaven permit your return."

"I promise it, Amine, since you are so earnest. I can refuse you
nothing; but I have a foreboding that yours and my happiness will be
wrecked for ever. I am not a visionary, but it does appear to me that,
strangely mixed up as I am, at once with this world and the next, some
little portion of futurity is opened to me. I have given my promise,
Amine, but from it I would fain be released."

"And if ill _do_ come, Philip, it is our destiny. Who can avert fate?"

"Amine, we are free agents, and to a certain extent are permitted to
direct our own destinies."

"Ay, so would Father Seysen fain have made me believe; but what he said
in support of his assertion was to me incomprehensible. And yet he said
that it was a part of the Catholic faith. It may be so--I am unable to
understand many other points. I wish your faith were made more simple.
As yet the good man--for good he really is--has only led me into doubt."

"Passing through doubt, you will arrive at conviction, Amine."

"Perhaps so," replied Amine; "but it appears to me that I am as yet but
on the outset of my journey. But come, Philip; let us return. You must
to Amsterdam, and I will go with