It was no light or easy journey he had thus rashly undertaken on
the faith of a dream,--for dream he still believed it to be. Many
weary days and nights were consumed in the comfortless tedium of
travel, . . and though he constantly told himself what unheard-of
folly it was to pursue an illusive chimera of his own
imagination,--a mere phantasm which had somehow or other taken
possession of his brain at a time when that brain must have been
acted upon (so he continued to think) by strong mesmeric or
magnetic influence, he went on his way all the same with a sort of
dogged obstinacy which no fatigue could daunt or lessen. He never
lay down to rest without the faint hope of seeing once again, if
only in sleep, the radiant Being whose haunting words had sent him
on this quest of "Ardath,"--but herein his expectations were not
realized. No more flower-crowned angels floated before him--no
sweet whisper of love, encouragement, or promise came mysteriously
on his ears in the midnight silences,--his slumbers were always
profound and placid as those of a child and utterly dreamless.

One consolation he had however, ... he could write. Not a day
passed without his finding some new inspiration ... some fresh,
quaint, and lovely thought, that flowed of itself into most
perfect and rhythmical utterance,--glorious lines of verse glowing
with fervor and beauty seemed to fall from his pencil without any
effort on his part,--and if he had had reason in former times to
doubt the strength of his poetical faculty, it was now very
certain he could do so longer. His mind was as a fine harp newly
strung, attuned, and quivering with the consciousness of the music
pent-up within it,--and as he remembered the masterpiece of poesy
he had written in his seeming trance, the manuscript of which