“And who,” questioned Heliobas, in tones of hushed reverence, “Who was this Being that thus enchants your memory?”

“I know not!” replied Alwyn, with a dreamy smile of rapture on his lips and in his eyes.  “And yet her face ... oh! the entrancing beauty of that face! ... was not altogether unfamiliar.  I felt that I must have loved and lost her ages upon ages ago!  Crowned with white flowers, and robed in a garb that seemed spun from midsummer moonbeams, she stood ... a smiling Maiden-Sweetness in a paradise of glad sights and sounds, ... ah!  Eve, with the first sunrise radiance on her brows, was not more divinely fair! ...  Venus, new-springing from the silver sea-foam, was not more queenly glorious!  ‘I will remind thee of all thou hast forgotten,’ she said, and I understood her soft, half-reproachful accents.  ’It is not yet too late!  Thou hast lost much and suffered much, and thou hast blindly erred, but notwithstanding all these things, thou art my beloved since these many thousand days!’”

“Days—­which the world counts as years!” murmured Heliobas.  “You saw no one but her?”

“No one—­we were alone together.  A vast woodland stretched before us, she took my hand and led me beneath broad-arching trees to where a lake, silvered by some strange radiance, glittered diamond-like in the stirring of a balmy wind.  Here she bade me rest—­and sank gently on the flowery bank beside me.  Then viewing her more closely I greatly feared her beauty—­for I saw a wondrous halo wide and dazzling—­a golden aureole that spread itself around her in scintillating points of light—­light that reflected itself also on me and bathed me in its luminous splendor.  And as I gazed at her in speechless awe, she leaned toward me nearer and nearer, her deep, pure eyes burning softly into mine ... her hands touched me—­her arms closed round me ... her bright head lay in all its shining loveliness on my breast!  A tremulous ecstasy thrilled me as with fire ...  I gazed upon her as one might gaze on some fluttering, rare-plumaged bird ...  I dare not move or speak ...  I drank her sweetness down into my soul!  Now and then a sound as of distant harps playing broke the love-weighted silence ... and thus we remained together a heavenly breathing-space of wordless rapture; till suddenly and swiftly, as though she had received an invisible summons, she arose, her looks expressing a saintly patience, and laying her two hands upon my brows—­’Write,’ she said, ’write and proclaim A message of hope to the sorrowful star!  Write and let thine utterance be A true echo of the eternal