mind was in such a confusion of pain and pleasure--not without a hope of
deliverance somewhere in its clouded sky--that I could think no more, and
fell asleep.

I imagine that, had I never again seen the young man, I should not have
suffered. I think that, by slow natural degrees, his phantasmal presence
would have ceased to haunt me, and gradually I should have returned to my
former condition. I do not mean I should have forgotten him, but neither
should I have been troubled when I thought of him. I know I should never
have regretted having seen him. In that, I had nothing to blame myself
for, and should have felt--not that a glory had passed away from the
earth, but that I had had a vision of bliss. What it was, I should not
have had the power to recall, but it would have left with me the faith
that I had beheld something too ethereal for my memory to store. I should
have consoled myself both with the dream, and with the conviction that I
should not dream it again. The peaceful sense of recovered nearness to my
uncle would have been far more precious than the dream. The sudden fire
of transfiguration that had for a moment flamed out of the All, and
straightway withdrawn, would have become a memory only; but none the less
would that enlargement of the child way of seeing things have remained
with me. I do not think that would ever have left me: it is the care of
the prudent wise that bleaches the grass, and is as the fumes of sulphur
to the red rose of life.

Outwearied with inward conflict, I slept a dreamless sleep.



CHAPTER XII.