A curious, unnatural calmness suddenly possessed him, ... he surveyed with a quiet, almost cold, unconcern the prospect before him,—­a wide level square of land covered with tufts of coarse grass and clumps of wild tamarisk, ... nothing more.  This was the Field of Ardath ... this bare, unlovely wilderness without so much as a tree to grace its outline!  From where he stood he could view its whole extent,—­and as he beheld its complete desolation he smiled,—­a faint, half-bitter smile.  He thought of the words in the ancient book of “Esdras:”  “And the Angel bade me enter a waste field, and the field was barren and dry save of herbs, and the name of the field was Ardath.  And I wandered therein through the hours of the long night, and the silver eyes of the field did open before me and therein I saw signs and wonders.”

“Yes,—­the field is ‘barren and dry’ enough in all conscience!” he murmured listlessly—­“But as for the ‘silver eyes’ and the ’signs and wonders,’ they must have existed only in the venerable Prophet’s imagination, just as my flower-crowned Angel-maiden exists in mine.  Well! ... now, Theos Alwyn” ... he continued, apostrophizing himself aloud,—­“Are you contented?  Are you quite convinced of your folly? ... and do you acknowledge that a fair Dream is as much of a lie and a cheat as all the other fair-seeming things that puzzle and torture poor human nature?  Return to your former condition of reasoning and reasonable skepticism,—­ aye, even atheism if you will, for the materialists are right, ... you cannot prove a God or the possibility of any purely spiritual life.  Why thus hanker after a phantom loveliness?  Fame—­fame!  Win fame! ... that is enough for you in this world, ... and as for a next world, who believes in it?—­and who, believing, cares?”

Soliloquizing in this fashion, he set his foot on Ardath itself, determining to walk across and around it from end to end.  The grass was long and dry, yet it made no rustle beneath his tread ... he seemed to be shod with the magic shoes of silence.  He walked on till he reached about the middle of the field, where perceiving a broad flat stone near him, he sat down to rest.  There was a light mist rising,—­a thin moonlit-colored vapor that crept slowly upward from the ground and remained hovering like a wide, suddenly-spun gossamer web, some two or three inches above it, thus giving a cool, luminous, watery effect to the hot and arid soil.

“According to the Apocrypha, Esdras ‘sat among the flowers,’” he idly mused—­“Well! ... perhaps there were flowers in those days,—­ but it is very evident there are none now.  A more dreary, utterly desolate place than this famous ‘Ardath’ I have never seen!”

At that moment a subtle fragrance scented the still air, ... a fragrance deliciously sweet, as of violets mingled with myrtle.  He inhaled the delicate odor, surprised and confounded.