a pleasant languor possessed his limbs--a wholesome
weariness from his long wanderings--and he lay down upon a bank littered
with fallen leaves and slept. And as he slept in the fading light, the
spirit of Virginia approached him more nearly--more tangibly--than ever
before; and finally, when the red sun had sunk into the river, and when
the afterglow in the sky and the rainbow that lay upon the forest were
alike blotted out by the shadows of night, and the moon--a lustrous blur
through the haze--wandered uncertainly up the sky, she drew nearer and
nearer, and pressed a fluttering kiss--such a kiss as a butterfly might
bestow upon a flower--upon his lips; then, sighing, drew away.

The sleeper awoke with a start--a start of heavenly bliss followed by
instant pain--for as he peered into the night he saw that he was
alone--with the Silence and the Solitude. The winds lay still in heaven
and bore him no whisper or sigh. The perfume from the censers of the
angels still filled the air, but he was conscious of a great void--a
pain unbearable. The kiss had awakened a thousand thronging memories;
the kiss had robbed of their charm the elusive perfume, and the ghostly
whisper of fluttering garments, and the shadowy foot-falls, and the
faint, faraway sighs. Henceforth these would cease to satisfy. The kiss
had made him know the want of his heart for love and companionship, such
as the living Virginia had given him.

He listened and listened, but the winds lay still in heaven, and he was
alone with the Silence--the dread Silence--and the heart-hunger, and the
despair.

Then he arose from his bed of withered and sere leaves and as one
distraught, wandered through the shadows of the misty, weird night. In
the wood and by the waters he wandered, while the night wore on and the
moon held its way--still a lustrous blur in the heavens.

On, on he wandered, seeking peace for his soul and finding none, till
the moon was out and the stars fainted in the twilight of the
approaching day, when lo, above the end of the path through the wood,
the morning star--"Astarte's bediamonded crescent"--arose upon his
vision!

And as he gazed with wonder and delight upon the beautiful star, hope
was born anew in his heart, for he said,

"It is the Star of Love!"

He that had always looked for signs in the skies, had he not found one?
What could it mean, this rising of the Star of Love upon the hour of his
bitterest need but a sign of hope, of pe