s I was opening
the little gate which gave access from the pastureland into the garden,
a figure in white rose up from under light, feathery boughs, and a hand
was laid on my arm. I started; but my surprise was changed into fear
when I saw the pale face and sweet eyes of Lilian.

"Heavens! you here! you! at this hour! Lilian, what is this?"

"Hush!" she whispered, clinging to me; "hush! do not tell: no one knows.
I missed you when the storm came on; I have missed you ever since.
Others went in search of you and came back. I could not sleep, but the
rest are sleeping, so I stole down to watch for you. Brother, brother,
if any harm chanced to you, even the angels could not comfort me; all
would be dark, dark! But you are safe, safe, safe!" And she clung to me
yet closer.

"Ah, Lilian, Lilian, your vision in the hour I first beheld you was
indeed prophetic,--'each has need of the other.' Do you remember?"

"Softly, softly," she said, "let me think!" She stood quietly by my
side, looking up into the sky, with all its numberless stars, and its
solitary moon now sinking slow behind the verge of the forest. "It comes
back to me," she murmured softly,--"the Long ago,--the sweet Long ago!"

I held my breath to listen.

"There, there!" she resumed, pointing to the heavens; "do you see?
You are there, and my father, and--and--Oh! that terrible face, those
serpent eyes, the dead man's skull! Save me! save me!"

She bowed her head upon my bosom, and I led her gently back towards
the house. As we gained the door which she had left open, the starlight
shining across the shadowy gloom within, she lifted her face from my
breast, and cast a hurried fearful look round the shining garden, then
into the dim recess beyond the threshold.

"It is there--there!--the Shadow that lured me on, whispering that if
I followed it I should join my beloved. False, dreadful Shadow! it will
fade soon,--fade into the grinning horrible skull. Brother, brother,
where is my Allen? Is he dead--dead--or is it I who am dead to him?"

I could but clasp her again to my breast, and seek to mantle
her shivering form with my dripping garments, all the while my
eyes--following the direction which hers had taken--dwelt on the walls
of the nook within the threshold, half lost in darkness, half white in
starlight. And there I, too, beheld the haunting Luminous Shadow, the
spectral effigies of the mysterious being, whose very existence in the
flesh was a riddle