“So be it!” she said ...  “May Heaven truly sanctify all pure thoughts, and free the soul of my Beloved from sin!”

And slowly bending forward, as a delicate iris-blossom bends to the sway of the wind, she laid her hands about his neck, and touched his lips with her own...

Ah! ... what divine ecstasy,—­what wild and fiery transport filled him then! ...  Her kiss, like a penetrating lighting-flash, pierced to the very centre of his being,—­the moonbeams swam round him in eddying circles of gold—­the white field heaved to and fro, ... he caught her waist and clung to her, and in the burning marvel of that moment he forget everything, save that, whether spirit or mortal, she was in woman’s witching shape, and that all the glamour of her beauty was his for this one night at least, . . this night which now in the speechless, glorious delirium of love that overwhelmed him, seemed like the Mahometan’s night of Al-Kadr, “better than a thousand months!”

Drawn to her by some subtle mysterious attraction which he could neither explain nor control, and absorbed in a rapture beyond all that his highest and most daring flights of poetical fancy had ever conceived, he felt as though his very life were ebbing out of him to become part of hers, and this thought was strangely sweet, —­a perfect consummation of all his best desires! ...

All at once a cold shudder ran freezingly through his veins,—­a something chill and impalpable appeared to pass between him and her caressing arms—­his limbs grew numb and heavy—­his sight began to fail him ... he was sinking ... sinking, he knew not where, when suddenly she withdrew herself from his embrace.  Instantly his strength came back to him with a rush—­he sprang to his feet and stood erect, breathless, dizzy, and confused—­his pulses beating like hammer-strokes and every fiber in his frame quivering with excitement.

Entranced, impassioned, elated,—­filled with unutterable incomprehensible joy, he would have clasped her again to his heart,—­but she retreated swiftly from him, and standing several paces off, motioned him not to approach her more nearly.  He scarcely heeded her warning gesture, ... plunging recklessly through the flowers he had almost reached her side, when to his amazement and fear, his eager progress was stopped!

Stopped by some invisible, intangible barrier, which despite all his efforts, forcibly prevented him from advancing one step further,—­she was close within an arm’s length of him—­and yet he could not touch her! ...  Nothing apparently divided them, save a small breadth of the Ardath blossoms gleaming ivory-soft in the moonlight ... nevertheless that invincible influence thrust him back and held him fast, as though he were chained to the ground with weights of iron!

“Edris!”. he cried loudly, his former transport of delight changed into agony..  “Edris! ...  Come to me!  I cannot come to you!  What is this that parts us?”