"Hereafter!" echoes Theos bitterly ... "Thinkest thou that even
God, repenting of the evil He hath done, will ever be able to
compensate us by any future bliss, for all the needless anguish of
the Present?"

Zuriel looked at him with a strange, almost spectral expression of
mingled pity, fear, and misgiving, but he offered no reply to this
home-thrust of a question. In grave silence and with slow,
majestic tread he began to lead the way along through the dismal
labyrinth of black, winding arches, holding his blue lamp aloft as
he went, the better to lighten the dense gloom.

Theos followed him, silent also, and wrapped in stern, and
mournful musings of his own, . . musings through which faint threads
of pale recollection connected with his past glimmered hazily from
time to time, perplexing rather than enlightening his bewildered
brain.

Presently he found himself in a low, narrow vestibule illumined by
the bright yet soft radiance of a suspended Star,--and here,
coming close up with his guide and observing his dress and manner
more attentively, he suddenly perceived a shining SOMETHING which
the old man wore hanging from his neck and which flashed against
the sable hue of his garment like a wandering moonbeam.

Stopping abruptly, he examined this ornament with straining,
wistful gaze, . . and slowly, very slowly, recognized its fashion of
construction,--it was a plain silver Cross--nothing more. Yet at
sight of the sacred, strange, yet familiar Symbol, a chord seemed
to snap in his brain,--tears rushed to his tired eyes, and with a