n in air. Now the song ceased; when up and away
toward the head of the vale, flew the bird. "Lil! Lil! come back,
leave me not, blest souls of the maidens." But on flew the bird, far
up a defile, winging its way till a speck.

It was shortly after this, and upon the evening of a day which had
been tumultuous with sounds of warfare beyond the lower wall of the
glen; that Aleema came to Yillah in alarm; saying--"Yillah, the time
has come to follow thy bird; come, return to thy home in Oroolia."
And he told her the way she would voyage there: by the vortex on the
coast of Tedaidee. That night, being veiled and placed in the tent,
the maiden was borne to the sea-side, where the canoe was in waiting.
And setting sail quickly, by next morning the island of Amma was no
longer in sight.

And this was the voyage, whose sequel has already been recounted.

CHAPTER LI
The Dream Begins To Fade

Stripped of the strange associations, with which a mind like Yillah's
must have invested every incident of her life, the story of her abode
in Ardair seemed not incredible.

But so etherealized had she become from the wild conceits she
nourished, that she verily believed herself a being of the lands of
dreams. Her fabulous past was her present.

Yet as our intimacy grew closer and closer, these fancies seemed to
be losing their hold. And often she questioned me concerning my own
reminiscences of her shadowy isle. And cautiously I sought to produce
the impression, that whatever I had said of that clime, had been
revealed to me in dreams; but that in these dreams, her own
lineaments had smiled upon me; and hence the impulse which had sent
me roving after the substance of this spiritual image.

And true it was to say so; and right it was to swear it, upon her
white arms crossed. For oh, Yillah; were you not the earthly
semblance of that sweet vision, that haunted my earliest thoughts?

At first she had wildly believed, that the nameless affinities
between us, were owing to our having in times gone by dwelt together
in the same ethereal region. But thoughts like these were fast dying
out. Yet not without many strange scrutinies. More intently than ever
she gazed into my eyes; rested her ear against my heart, and listened
to its beatings. And love, which in the eye of its object ever seeks
to invest itself with some rare superiority, love, sometimes induced
me to prop my failing divinity; though it was I myself who had
undermined it