“Azul, tell me what shadow rests upon the life of him to whom I am now returning?”

Azul looked at me earnestly, and replied: 

“Thou daring one!  Seekest thou to pierce the future fate of others?  Is it not enough for thee to have heard the voice that maketh the Angel’s singing silent, and wouldst thou yet know more?”

I was full of a strange unhesitating courage, therefore I said fearlessly: 

“He is thy Beloved one, Azul—­thy Twin Soul; and wilt thou let him fall away from thee when a word or sign might save him?”

“Even as he is my Beloved, so let him not fail to hear my voice,” replied Azul, with a tinge of melancholy.  “For though he has accomplished much, he is as yet but mortal.  Thou canst guide him thus far; tell him, when death lies like a gift in his hand, let him withhold it, and remember me.  And now, my friend—­farewell!”

I would have spoken again, but could not.  An oppressed sensation came over me, and I seemed to plunge coldly into a depth of inextricable blackness.  I felt cramped for room, and struggled for existence, for motion, for breath.  What had happened to me?  I wondered indignantly.  Was I a fettered prisoner? had I lost the use of my light aerial limbs that had borne me so swiftly through the realms of space?  What crushing weight overpowered me? why such want of air and loss of delightful ease?  I sighed restlessly and impatiently at the narrow darkness in which I found myself—­a sorrowful, deep, shuddering sigh .... and WOKE!  That is to say, I languidly opened mortal eyes to find myself once more pent up in mortal frame, though I retained a perfect remembrance and consciousness of everything I had experienced during my spirit-wanderings.  Heliobas stood in front of me with outstretched hands, and his eyes were fixed on mine with a mingled expression of anxiety and authority, which changed into a look of relief and gladness as I smiled at him and uttered his name aloud.

CHAPTER XII.

Secrets of the sun and moon.

“Have I been long away?” I asked, as I raised myself upright in the chair where I had been resting.

“I sent you from hence on Thursday morning at noon,” replied Heliobas.  “It is now Friday evening, and within a few minutes of midnight.  I was growing alarmed.  I have never known anyone stay absent for so long; and you resisted my authority so powerfully, that I began to fear you would never come back at all.”

“I wish I had not been compelled to do so!” I said regretfully.

He smiled.

“No doubt you do.  It is the general complaint.  Will you stand up now and see how you feel?”

I obeyed.  There was still a slight sensation about me as of being cramped for space; but this was passing, and otherwise I felt singularly strong, bright and vigorous.  I stretched out my hands in unspeakable gratitude to him through whose scientific power I had gained my recent experience.