Part Three Poet and Angel Chapter 37 A Missing Record

"One friend only,--my old school comrade, Frank Villiers"--replied Alwyn.

"And what does he say about it?"

"Oh, he thinks it was a dream from beginning to end,"--and Alwyn smiled a little,--"He believes that I set out on my journey with my brain already heated to an imaginative excess, and that the whole thing, even my Angel's presence, was a pure delusion of my own overwrought fancy,--a curious and wonderful delusion, but always a delusion."

"He is a very excellent fellow to judge you so leniently"-- observed Heliobas composedly, "Most people would call you mad."

"Mad!" exclaimed Alwyn hotly--"Why, I am as sane as any man in London!"

"Saner, I should say,"--replied Heliobas, smiling,--"Compared with some of the eminently 'practical' speculating maniacs that howl and struggle among the fluctuating currents of the Stock Exchange, for instance, you are indeed a marvel of sound and wholesome mental capability! But let us view the matter coolly. You must not expect such an exceptional experience as yours to be believed in by ordinary persons. Because the majority of people, being utterly UNspiritual and worldly, have NO such experiences, and they therefore deem them impossible;--they are the gold-fish born in a bowl, who have no consciousness of the existence of an ocean. Moreover, you have no proofs of the truth of your narrative, beyond the change in your own life and disposition,--and that can be easily referred to various other causes. You spoke of having gathered one of the miracle-flowers on the Prophet's field,--may I see it?"