it had always stopped hitherto, stopped for a
moment, and then, in spite of his efforts, had slipped from his grasp
and faded back into the night. But now he wondered if he had been
willing to put forth his utmost strength, after all. Had there not
always been an element of dread in the thought of beholding the mystery
face to face? Had he not even allowed the Vision to dissolve, the Answer
to recede into the obscurity whence it came?

But never a night had been so beautiful as this. It was the full period
of the spring. The air was a veritable caress. The infinite repose
of the little garden, sleeping under the night, was delicious beyond
expression. It was a tiny corner of the world, shut off, discreet,
distilling romance, a garden of dreams, of enchantments.

Below, in the little valley, the resplendent colourations of the million
flowers, roses, lilies, hyacinths, carnations, violets, glowed like
incandescence in the golden light of the rising moon. The air was thick
with the perfume, heavy with it, clogged with it. The sweetness
filled the very mouth. The throat choked with it. Overhead wheeled the
illimitable procession of the constellations. Underfoot, the earth was
asleep. The very flowers were dreaming. A cathedral hush overlay all
the land, and a sense of benediction brooded low,--a divine kindliness
manifesting itself in beauty, in peace, in absolute repose.

It was a time for visions. It was the hour when dreams come true, and
lying deep in the grasses beneath the pear trees, Vanamee, dizzied with
mysticism, reaching up and out toward the supernatural, felt, as it
were, his mind begin to rise upward from out his body. He passed into a
state of being the like of which he had not known before. He felt that
his imagination was reshaping itself, preparing to receive an impression
never experienced until now. His body felt light to him, then it
dwindled, vanished. He saw with new eyes, heard with new ears, felt with
a new heart.

"Come to me," he murmured.

Then slowly he felt the advance of the Vision. It was approaching. Every
instant it drew gradually nearer. At last, he was to see. It had left
the shadow at the base of the hill; it was on the hill itself. Slowly,
steadily, it ascended the slope; just below him there, he heard a faint
stirring. The grasses rustled under the touch of a foot. The leaves
of the bushes murmured, as a hand brushed against them; a slender twig
creaked. The sounds of approach w