"As I tell you, I was caught up,--snatched out of that black
profundity with inconceivable swiftness,--and when the ascending
movement ceased, I found myself floating lightly like a wind-blown
leaf through twining arches of amber mist, colored here and there
with rays of living flame ... I heard whispers, and fragments of
song and speech, all sweeter than the sweetest of our known music,
... and still I saw nothing. Presently some one called me by name
--'THEOS! ... THEOS!' I strove to answer, but I had no words
wherewith to match that silver-toned, far-reaching utterance; and
once again the rich vibrating notes pealed through the vaporous
fire-tinted air--'THEOS, MY BELOVED! HIGHER! ... HIGHER! ... All
my being thrilled and quivered to that call. I yearned to obey,
... I struggled to rise--my efforts were in vain; when, to my joy
and wonder, a small, invisible hand, delicate yet strong, clasped
mine, and I was borne aloft with breathless, indescribable,
lightning-like rapidity--on ... on ... and ever upward, till at
last, alighting on a smooth, fair turf, thick-grown with fragrant
blossoms of strange loveliness and soft hues, I beheld Her! ...
and she bade me welcome."

"And who," questioned Heliobas, in tones of hushed reverence, "Who
was this Being that thus enchants your memory?"

"I know not!" replied Alwyn, with a dreamy smile of rapture on his
lips and in his eyes. "And yet her face ... oh! the entrancing
beauty of that face! ... was not altogether unfamiliar. I felt
that I must have loved and lost her ages upon ages ago! Crowned
with white flowers, and robed in a garb that seemed spun from
midsummer moonbeams, she stood ... a smiling Maiden-Sweetness in a