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