swallowed up in it.  And at last, in the midst of a silver shining atmosphere, he felt as if something burst within his brain,—­as if a strong chain were broken; and at that moment a sense of heavenly liberty, of unutterable delight, of freedom from the body, of birdlike lightness, seemed to float him into the space itself.  “Whom, now upon earth, dost thou wish to see?” whispered the voice of Mejnour.  “Viola and Zanoni!” answered Glyndon, in his heart; but he felt that his lips moved not.

Suddenly at that thought,—­through this space, in which nothing save one mellow translucent light had been discernible,—­a swift succession of shadowy landscapes seemed to roll:  trees, mountains, cities, seas, glided along like the changes of a phantasmagoria; and at last, settled and stationary, he saw a cave by the gradual marge of an ocean shore,—­myrtles and orange-trees clothing the gentle banks.  On a height, at a distance, gleamed the white but shattered relics of some ruined heathen edifice; and the moon, in calm splendour, shining over all, literally bathed with its light two forms without the cave, at whose feet the blue waters crept, and he thought that he even heard them murmur.  He recognised both the figures.  Zanoni was seated on a fragment of stone; Viola, half-reclining by his side, was looking into his face, which was bent down to her, and in her countenance was the expression of that perfect happiness which belongs to perfect love.  “Wouldst thou hear them speak?” whispered Mejnour; and again, without sound, Glyndon inly answered, “Yes!” Their voices then came to his ear, but in tones that seemed to him strange; so subdued were they, and sounding, as it were, so far off, that they were as voices heard in the visions of some holier men from a distant sphere.

“And how is it,” said Viola, “that thou canst find pleasure in listening to the ignorant?”

“Because the heart is never ignorant; because the mysteries of the feelings are as full of wonder as those of the intellect.  If at times thou canst not comprehend the language of my thoughts, at times also I hear sweet enigmas in that of thy emotions.”

“Ah, say not so!” said Viola, winding her arm tenderly round his neck, and under that heavenly light her face seemed lovelier for its blushes.  “For the enigmas are but love’s common language, and love should solve them.  Till I knew thee,—­till I lived with thee; till I learned to watch for thy footstep when absent:  yet even in absence to see thee everywhere!—­I dreamed not how strong and all-pervading is the connection between nature and the human soul!...

“And yet,” she continued, “I am now assured of what I at first believed,—­that the feelings which attracted me towards thee at first were not those of love.  I know that, by comparing the present with the past,—­it was a sentiment then wholly of the mind or the spirit!  I could not hear thee now say, ‘Viola, be happy with another!’”