He spoke with mingled fervor and humility.  To any ordinary observer he would have seemed to be laboring under home strange hallucination,—­but Heliobas was more deeply instructed.

“Come, come! ... your thoughts are wide of this world,” he said kindly.  “Try to recall them!  I can tell you nothing, for I know nothing. ... you have been absent many hours.”

“Absent? yes!” and Alwyn’s voice thrilled with an infinite regret.  “Absent from earth.. ah! would to God I might hive stayed with her, in Heaven!  My love, my love! where shal I find her if not in the field of Ardath?”

CHAPTER V.

A mystic tryst.

As he uttered the last words, his eyes darkened into a soft expression of musing tenderness, and he remained silent for many minutes, during which the entranced, almost unearthly beauty of his face underwent a gradual change ... the mystic light that had for a time transfigured it, faded and died away—­and by degrees he recovered all his ordinary self possession.  Presently glancing at Heliobas, who stood patiently waiting till he should have overcome whatever emotions were at work in his mind, he smiled.

“You must think me mad!” he said.  “Perhaps I am,—­but if so, it is the madness of love that has seized me.  Love! ... it is a passion I have never known before..  I have used it as a mere thread whereon to string madrigals. a background of uncertain tint serving to show off the brighter lines of Poesy—­but now! ... now I am enslaved and bound, conquered and utterly subdued by love! ... love for the sweetest, queenliest, most radiant creature that ever captured or commanded the worship of man!  I may seem mad—­but I know I am sane—­I realize the actual things of this world about me mind is—­my clear, my thoughts are collected, and yet I repeat, I love! ... aye! with all the force and fervor of this strongly beating human heart of mine;”—­and he touched his breast as he spoke.  “And it comes to this, most wise and worthy Heliobas,—­if your spells have conjured up this vision of immortal youth and grace and purity that has suddenly assumed such sovereignty over my life—­then you must do something further, ... you must find, or teach me how to find, the living Reality of my Dream!”

Heliobas surveyed him with some wonder and commiseration.

“A moment ago and you yourself declared your dream was true!” he observed.  “This,” and he pointed to the manuscript on the table, “seemed to you sufficient to prove it.  Now you have altered you opinion:  . .  Why?  I have worked no spells upon you, and I am entirely ignorant as to what your recent experience has been.  Moreover, what do you mean by a ‘living Reality’?  The flesh and blood, bone and substance that perishes in a brief seventy years or so and crumbles into indistinguishable dust?  Surely, ... if, as I conjecture from your words, you have seen one of the fair inhabitants of higher spheres than ours, . . you would not drag her spiritual and death unconscious brightness down to the level of the ’reality of a merely human life?  Nay, if you would, you could not!”