Even now I was uncertain how to find Cynthia.  But recollecting that Amroth had warned me that I had gained new powers which I might exercise, I set myself to use them.  I concentrated myself upon the thought of Cynthia; and in a moment, just as the hand of a man in a dark room, feeling for some familiar object, encounters and closes upon the thing he is seeking, I seemed to touch and embrace the thought of Cynthia.  I directed myself thither.  The breeze fanned my hair, and as I opened my eyes I saw that I was in an unfamiliar place—­not the forest where I had left Cynthia, but in a terraced garden, under a great hill, wooded to the peak.  Stone steps ran up through the terraces, the topmost of which was crowned by a long irregular building, very quaintly designed.  I went up the steps, and, looking about me, caught sight of two figures seated on a wooden seat at a little distance from me, overlooking the valley.  One of these was Cynthia.  The other was a young and beautiful woman; the two were talking earnestly together.  Suddenly Cynthia turned and saw me, and rising quickly, came to me and caught me in her arms.

“I was sure you were somewhere near me, dearest,” she said; “I dreamed of you last night, and you have been in my thoughts all day.”

My darling was in some way altered.  She looked older, wiser, and calmer, but she was in my eyes even more beautiful.  The other girl, who had looked at us in surprise for a moment, rose too and came shyly forwards.  Cynthia caught her hand, and presented her to me, adding, “And now you must leave us alone for a little, if you will forgive me for asking it, for we have much to ask and to say.”

The girl smiled and went off, looking back at us, I thought, half-enviously.

We went and sat down on the seat, and Cynthia said: 

“Something has happened to you, dear one, I see, since I saw you last—­something great and glorious.”

“Yes,” I said, “you are right; I have seen the beginning and the end; and I have not yet learned to understand it.  But I am the same, Cynthia, and yours utterly.  We will speak of this later.  Tell me first what has happened to you, and what this place is.  I will not waste time in talking; I want to hear you talk and to see you talk.  How often have I longed for that!”

Cynthia took my hand in both of her own, and then unfolded to me her story.  She had lived long in the forest, alone with the child, and then the day had come when the desire to go farther had arisen in his mind, and he had left her, and she had felt strangely desolate, till she too had been summoned.

“And this place—­how can I describe it?” she said.  “It is a home for spirits who have desired love on earth, and who yet, from some accident of circumstance, have never found one to love them with any intimacy of passion.  How strange it is to think,” she went on, “that I, just by the inheritance of beauty, was surrounded with love and the wrong sort of love, so that I never