countenance too beautiful and too unearthly to describe, she spoke these
words:

"Farewell, William; we meet again," and vanished.

I awoke, and the dream remained impressed upon my mind for a long time
afterwards.

Recovering at length from my illness, I resumed my duties at the
theatre, where I was received with immense applause after my long
absence, and continued my career with enthusiasm on my part and
admiration on the part of my audience. Night after night I would go
through my part, and week after week and month after month passed away,
and I neither heard nor saw anything further of Maud since our strange
meeting in the stage box--_viz._, on the 31st of December.

Sometimes a violent desire to see her again would seize me in the midst
of my part, and I would glance furtively towards the haunted spot, half
expecting to see her, but I never saw her again from that day to this.
The dream I had had concerning her during my illness often recurred to
me, and I wondered whether it really was a revelation or only an
ordinary dream to be accounted for by the state of my health at the
time.

I had seen no more of Maud's family, neither had I again met our common
friend the doctor or any other friend of the family from whom I might
learn the state of Maud's health, or whether she were dead or alive.

A year or two passed away, when I was invited by some friends of mine to
spend a week or so at their country seat, not very far from the seat of
Maud's family. I took the stage, and was put down at a country inn, from
whence I had to walk about a mile-and-a-half to reach my friend's house.
It was early in the morning when I arrived at the inn, and not being in
a particular hurry to reach the house, thinking that the family might
not yet have risen, I sauntered leisurely along the carriage road,
halting occasionally and looking around me. The whole scene--the air
itself--seemed to call up memories of Maud.

Absorbed in a reverie, I wandered on until I found myself at the gate of
a cemetery, which I mechanically entered. I had passed the same cemetery
often before in my walks with Maud. What a picturesque old place it was!
Filled with old crumbling monuments with quaint epitaphs and overgrown
with rank grass and weeds.

It was one of Maud's favourite spots for meditation, as she told me. It
was so perfectly solitary--overlooked by no houses and shut out from the
gaze of passers-by with thick yew trees and cypress. The