In the zenith was a white lustre which obliterated distinction of form as much as did the cloudy obscurity at the end of the room.  Now the design seemed about to unfold itself; then again it eluded the gazer’s grasp.  Suddenly at length it stood revealed.  A gigantic face, with wide-floating hair and beard, looked down into Balder’s own.  Its expression was of infinite malignity and despair.  The impersonation of all that is wicked and miserable, its place was at the top of Heaven; it was moulded of those aspiring forms of light, and was the goal which the brightest attained.  Moreover, either by some ugly coincidence or how otherwise he could not conceive, this countenance of supreme evil was the very reflex of Balder’s,—­a portrait minutely true, and, despite its satanic expression, growing every moment more unmistakable.

Was this accident, or the contrivance of an unknown and unfathomable malice?  Balder, Lord of Heaven, instinct with the essence of Hell!  A grim satire on his religious speculations!  But what satirist had been bitter enough so to forestall the years?—­for the painting must have been designed while Balder was still an infant.

He threw himself off the bed and stepped to the window, and saw the blue sky and the river rhyming it.  The breath of the orchard visited him, and he was greeted by the green grass and trees, He sighed with relief.  There had been three mornings since his return to America.  For the first he had blessed his own senses; the second had looked him out of countenance but the third came with a benediction, serene and mighty, such as Balder’s soul had not hitherto been open to.

“This is more than a plaster heaven,” said he, looking up; “but I fear, Balder Helwyse, your only heaven, thus far, has been of plaster.  You have seen this morning how the God of such a heaven looks.  How about the God of this larger Heaven, think you?”

Presently he turned away from the window; but he had quaffed so deeply of the morning glory, that the sinister frescos no longer depressed him.  They were ridiculously unimportant,—­nothing more than stains on the wall, in fact.  Balder could not tell why he felt light-hearted.  It was solemn light-heartedness,—­not the gayety of sensuous spirits, such as he had experienced heretofore.  It had little to do with physical well-being, for the young man was still faint and dizzy, and weak from hunger.  Behold, then, at the foot of the bed, a carved table covered with a damask cloth and crowned with an abundant breakfast; not an ordinary breakfast of coffee, rolls, omelette, and beefsteak, but a pastoral breakfast,—­fresh milk, bread and honey and fruit and mellow cheese,—­such food as Adam might have begun the day with.