Drawing a long, deep breath, he stood for a moment amazed and lost in thought—­these sounds, he felt sure, were not of earth but of heaven! they had the same ringing sweetness as those he had heard on the Field of Ardath!  What might they mean to him, here and now?  Quick as a flash the answer came—­death!  God had taken pity upon his solitary earth wanderings,—­and the prayers of Edris had shortened his world-exile and probation!  He was to die! and that solemn singing was the warning,—­or the promise,—­of his approaching end!

Yes! it must be so, he decided, as, with a strange, half-sad peace at his heart, he quietly descended the steps of the Dom,-he would perhaps be permitted to finish the work he was at present doing,—­ and then,—­then, the poet-pen would be laid aside forever, chains would be undone, and he would be set at liberty!  Such was his fixed idea.  Was he glad of the prospect, he asked himself?  Yes, and No!  For himself he was glad; but in these latter days he had come to understand the thousand wordless wants and aspirations of mankind,—­wants and aspirations to which only the Poet can give fitting speech; he had begun to see how much can be done to cheer and raise and ennoble the world by even one true, brave, earnest, and unselfish worker,—­and he had attained to such a height in sympathetic comprehension of the difficulties and drawbacks of others, that he had ceased to consider himself at all in the question, either with regard to the Present or the immortal Future,—­he was, without knowing it, in the simple, unconsciously perfect attitude of a Soul that is absolutely at one with God, and that thus, in involuntary God-likeness, is only happy in the engendering of happiness.  He believed that, with the Divine help, he could do a lasting good for his fellow-men,—­and to this cause he was willing to sacrifice everything that pertained to his own mere personal advantage.  But now,—­now,—­or so he imagined,—­he was not to be allowed to pursue his labors of love,—­his trial was to end suddenly,—­and he, so long banished from his higher heritage, was to be restored to it without delay,—­restored and drawn back to the land of perfect loveliness where Edris, his Angel, waited for him, his saint, his queen, his bride!

A thrill of ecstatic joy rushed through him,—­joy intermingled with an almost supernal pain.  For he had not as yet said enough to the world,—­the world of many afflictions,—­the little Sorrowful Star covered with toiling, anxious, deluded God-forgetting millions, in every unit of which was a spark of Heavenly flame, a germ of the spiritual essence that makes the angel, if only fostered aright.