it was to the face of the Angel in his vision! For that ethereal
Being had seemed dazzlingly, supremely beautiful beyond all mortal
power of description,--whereas this girl was simply fair, small,
and delicate, with something wistful and pathetic in the lines of
her sweet mouth, and shadows as of remembered sorrows slumbering
in the depths of her serene, dove-like eyes. Her fragile figure
drooped wearily as though she were exhausted by some long fatigue,
... yet, ... gazing down upon him, she smiled, ... and in that
smile, the faint resemblance she bore to his Spirit-ideal flashed
out like a beam of sunlight, though it vanished again as quickly
as it had shone. He waited eagerly to hear her voice, ... waited
in a sort of breathless suspense,--but as she still kept silence,
he sprang up from his kneeling attitude and seized her hands ...
how soft they were and warm!--he folded them in his own and drew
her closer to himself ... the flowers she held fell from her
grasp, and lay in a tumbled fragrant heap between them. His brain
was in a whirl--the Past and the Future--the Real and the Unreal--
the Finite and the Infinite--seemed all merging into one another
without any shade of difference or division!

"We have met very strangely, you and I!"--he said, scarcely
conscious of the words he uttered--"Will you not tell me your
name?"

A faint sigh escaped her.

"My name is Edris," she answered, in low musical accents, that
carried to his sense of hearing a suggestion, of something sweet
and familiar.