sprang into instant opposition,—­with this difference, that while he was ignorant and unconscious of his power, I was cognizant and fully conscious of mine.  Mine was focused, as it were, upon him,—­ his was untrained and. scattered,—­the result was that mine won the victory:  yet understand me well, Hilarion,—­if I could have held myself in, I would have done so.  It was he,—­he who drew my force out of me as one would draw a sword out of its scabbard—­the sword may be ever so stiffly fixed in its sheath, but the strong hand will wrench it forth somehow, and use it for battle when needed.”

“Then,” said Hilarion wonderingly, “you admit this man possesses a power greater than your own?”

“Aye, if he knew it!” returned Heliobas, quietly.  “But he does not know.  Only an angel could teach him—­and in angels he does not believe.”

“He may believe now. ... !”

“He may.  He will—­he must, ... if he has gone where I would have him go.”

“A poet, is he not!” queried Hilarion softly, bending down to look more attentively at the beautiful Antinous-like face colorless and cold as sculptured alabaster.

“An uncrowned monarch of a world of song!” responded Heliobas, with a tender inflection in his rich voice.  “A genius such as the earth sees but once in a century!  But he has been smitten with the disease of unbelief and deprived of hope,—­and where there is no hope there is no lasting accomplishment.”  He paused, and with a touch as gentle as a woman’s, rearranged the cushions under Alwyn’s heavy head, and laid his hand in grave benediction on the broad white brow shaded by its clustering waves of dark hair.  “May the Infinite Love bring him out of danger into peace and safety!” he said solemnly,—­then turning away, he took his companion by the arm, and they both left the room, closing the door quietly behind them.  The chapel bell went on tolling slowly, slowly, sending muffled echoes through the fog for some minutes—­then it ceased, and profound stillness reigned.

The monastery was always a very silent habitation,—­situated as it was on so lofty and barren a crag, it was far beyond the singing-reach of the smaller sweet-throated birds—­now and then an eagle clove the mist with a whirr of wings and a discordant scream on his way toward some distant mountain eyrie—­but no other sound of awakening life broke the hush of the slowly widening dawn.  An hour passed—­and Alwyn still remained in the same position,—­as pallidly quiescent as a corpse stretched out for burial.  By and by a change begin to thrill mysteriously through the atmosphere, like the flowing of amber wine through crystal—­the heavy vapors shuddered together as though suddenly lashed by a whip of flame,—­ they rose, swayed to and fro, and parted asunder. ... then, dissolving into thin, milk-white veils of fleecy film, they floated away, disclosing as they vanished, the giant summits of the encircling mountains, that