By and by come a few tears, with a struggle at first, then more easily.  Kind darkness lets us think of Salome bright and comely as in the old days, with the added grace of inward beauty wrought by sad experience.  But, in truth, she is marred past earthly recovery.  Nothing removes a soul so far from human sympathy as self-repression,—­especially for any merely human end!

The night creeps reluctantly westward; the gray owl wings back to his shady corner; the adventurous snail, half-way up the palm-tree, glues himself to the bark and turns in for a nap.  The crocodile has resumed his old position on the rock in the pool, and the flower petal floats on the water.  Here comes the brilliant hoopoe with his smart crest and clear chirrup, impatient to bid Gnulemah good morning!  All is as before, save that the group beneath the palm-trees has disappeared!

Balder slept late, yet, on awakening, he thought he must be dreaming still.  He could not distinguish imagination from reality.  His mind had temporarily lost its grasp, his will its authority.  Where was he?  Was it years or hours since he had entered Boston harbor?

Suddenly rose before him the vision of the deadly struggle on the midnight sea.  Round this central point the rest crystallized in order.  His heart sank, and he sighed most heavily.  But presently he rose to his elbow and stared about in bewilderment.  Had he ever seen this room before?  How came he here?

He was lying on a carved bedstead, furnished with sheets of fine linen and a counterpane of blue embroidered satin; but all bearing an appearance of great age.  The room was oval, like a bird’s-egg halved lengthwise; the smoothly vaulted ceiling being frescoed with a crowd of figures.  The rich and costly furniture harmonized with the bedstead, and bore the same marks of age.  The chairs and lounge were satin-covered; the sumptuous toilet-table was fitted with a mirror of true crystal; the arched window was curtained with azure satin and lace.  It was a chamber fit for a princess of the old regime, unaltered since its fair occupant last abode in it.

Balder now examined the frescos which covered wall and ceiling.  The subject seemed at the first glance to be a Last Judgment, or something of that nature.  A mingled rush of forms mounted on one side to the bright zenith, and thence lapsed confusedly down the opposite descent.  The dark end of the room presented a cloud of gloomily fantastic shapes, swerved from the main stream, and becoming darker and more formless the farther they receded, till at the last they were lost in a murky shadow.  Not entirely lost, however; for as Balder gazed awfully thitherward, the shadow seemed to resolve itself into a mass of intertwined and struggling beings, neither animal nor human, but combining the more unholy traits of both.

But from the centre of the upward stream shone forms and faces of angelic beauty; yet, on looking more narrowly, Balder discerned in each one some ghastly peculiarity, revealing itself just when enjoyment of the beauty was on the point of becoming complete.  Such was the effect that the most angelic forms were translated into mocking demons, and where the light seemed brightest there was the spiritual darkness most profound.