“Is it he?  Is it he?  Is it he?” she repeated again and again, in varying tones, chiming the changes of hope and fear, of certainty and vacillation, of sadness and of gladness, of eager passion and of chilling doubt.

She stood still, staring at the pavement, her fingers clasped together, the palms of her hands turned downward, her arms relaxed.  She did not see the dark red squares of marble, alternating with the white and the gray, but as she looked a face and a form rose before her, in the contemplation of which all her senses and faculties concentrated themselves.  The pale and noble head grew very distinct in her inner sight, the dark gray eyes gazed sadly upon her, the passionate features were fixed in the expression of a great sorrow.

“Are you indeed he?” she asked, speaking softly and doubtfully, and yet unconsciously projecting her strong will upon the vision, as though to force it to give the answer for which she longed.

And the answer came, imposed by the effort of her imagination upon the thing imagined.  The face suddenly became luminous, as with a radiance within itself; the shadows of grief melted away, and in their place trembled the rising light of a dawning love.  The lips moved and the voice spoke, not as it had spoken to her lately, but in tones long familiar to her in dreams by day and night.

“I am he, I am that love for whom you have waited; you are that dear one whom I have long sought throughout the world.  The hour of our joy has struck, the new life begins to-day, and there shall be no end.”

Unorna’s arms went out to grasp the shadow, and she drew it to her in her fancy and kissed its radiant face.

“To ages of ages!” she cried.

Then she covered her eyes as though to impress the sight they had seen upon the mind within, and groping blindly for her chair sank back into her seat.  But the mechanical effort of will and memory could not preserve the image.  In spite of all inward concentration of thought, its colours faded, its outlines trembled, grew faint and vanished, and darkness was in its place.  Unorna’s hand dropped to her side, and a quick throb of pain stabbed her through and through, agonising as the wound of a blunt and jagged knife, though it was gone almost before she knew where she had felt it.  Then her eyes flashed with unlike fires, the one dark and passionate as the light of a black diamond, the other keen and daring as the gleam of blue steel in the sun.

“Ah, but I will!” she exclaimed.  “And what I will—­shall be.”

As though she were satisfied with the promise thus made to herself, she smiled, her eyelids drooped, the tension of her frame was relaxed, and she sank again into the indolent attitude in which the Wanderer had found her.  A moment later the distant door turned softly upon its hinges and a light footfall broke the stillness.  There was no need for Unorna to speak in order that the sound of her voice might guide the new comer to her retreat.  The footsteps approached swiftly and surely.  A young man of singular beauty came out of the green shadows and stood beside the chair in the open space.