No smile of lip or eye can delude me into accepting mere surface-matter for real depth, and it is intensely painful for me to be forced to behold hypocrisy in the expression of the apparently devout--sensuality in the face of some radiantly beautiful and popular woman--vice under the mask of virtue--self-interest in the guise of friendship, and spite and malice springing up like a poisonous undergrowth beneath the words of elegant flattery or dainty compliment.

I often wish I could throw a rose-coloured mist of illusion over all these things and still more earnestly do I wish I could in a single instance find myself mistaken.
But alas! the fatal finger of the electric instinct within me points out unerringly the flaw in every human diamond, and writes "SHAM" across many a cunningly contrived imitation of intelligence and goodness.

Still, the grief I feel at this is counterbalanced in part by the joy with which I quickly recognize real virtue, real nobility, real love; and when these attributes flash out upon me from the faces of human beings, my own soul warms, and I know I have seen a vision as of angels.

The capability of Heliobas to foretell future events proved itself in his knowledge of the fate of the famous English hero, Gordon, long before that brave soldier met his doom.

At the time the English Government sent him out on his last fatal mission, a letter from Heliobas to me contained the following passage: "I see Gordon has chosen his destiny and the manner of his death.