r of
an hour; and grave philosophers conversed on high and subtle matters,
with youth listening reverently; it was a long time ago. And still
beneath all this wonderful panorama a sort of suspicion or expectation
lurked in the dreamer's mind. "This is a prologue, a flourish, there is
something behind; something that means me no good, something mysterious,
awful."

And one night that the wizard Colonna had transcended himself, he
pointed with his stick, and there was a swallowing up of many great
ancient cities, and the pair stood on a vast sandy plain with a huge
crimson sun sinking to rest, There were great palm-trees; and there
were bulrush hives, scarce a man's height, dotted all about to the sandy
horizon, and the crimson sun.

"These are the anchorites of the Theban desert," said Colonna calmly;
"followers not of Christ and His apostles, and the great fathers, but
of the Greek pupils of the Egyptian pupils of the Brachmans and
Gymnosophists."

And Clement thought that he burned to go and embrace the holy men and
tell them his troubles, and seek their advice. But he was tied by the
feet somehow, and could not move, and the crimson sun sank, and it got
dusk, and the hives scarce visible, And Colonna's figure became shadowy
and shapeless, but his eyes glowed ten times brighter; and this thing
all eyes spoke and said: "Nay, let them be, a pack of fools I see how
dismal it all is." Then with a sudden sprightliness, "But I hear one of
them has a manuscript of Petronius, on papyrus; I go to buy it; farewell
for ever, for ever, for ever."

And it was pitch dark, and a light came at Clement's back like a gentle
stroke, a glorious roseate light. It warmed as well as brightened. It
loosened his feet from the ground; he turned round, and there, her face
irradiated with sunshine, and her hair glittering like the gloriola of a
saint, was Margaret Brandt.

She blushed and smiled and cast a look of ineffable tenderness on him,
"Gerard," she murmured, "be whose thou wilt by day, but at night be
mine!"

Even as she spoke, the agitation of seeing her so suddenly awakened him,
and he found himself lying trembling from head to foot.

That radiant figure and mellow voice seemed to have struck his nightly
keynote.

Awake he could pray, and praise, and worship God; he was master of his
thoughts. But if he closed his eyes in sleep, Margaret, or Satan in her
shape, beset him, a seeming angel of light. He might dream of a thousand