soft, yet luminous, white twilight,
like a gentle mist of light. Beyond this, I could see nothing. Even the
walls had vanished.

Presently, I became conscious that a faint, continuous sound, pulsed
through the silence that wrapped me. I listened intently. It grew more
distinct, until it appeared to me that I harked to the breathings of
some great sea. I cannot tell how long a space passed thus; but, after a
while, it seemed that I could see through the mistiness; and, slowly, I
became aware that I was standing upon the shore of an immense and silent
sea. This shore was smooth and long, vanishing to right and left of me,
in extreme distances. In front, swam a still immensity of sleeping
ocean. At times, it seemed to me that I caught a faint glimmer of light,
under its surface; but of this, I could not be sure. Behind me, rose up,
to an extraordinary height, gaunt, black cliffs.

Overhead, the sky was of a uniform cold grey color--the whole place
being lit by a stupendous globe of pale fire, that swam a little above
the far horizon, and shed a foamlike light above the quiet waters.

Beyond the gentle murmur of the sea, an intense stillness prevailed.
For a long while, I stayed there, looking out across its strangeness.
Then, as I stared, it seemed that a bubble of white foam floated up out
of the depths, and then, even now I know not how it was, I was looking
upon, nay, looking _into_ the face of Her--aye! into her face--into her
soul; and she looked back at me, with such a commingling of joy and
sadness, that I ran toward her, blindly; crying strangely to her, in a
very agony of remembrance, of terror, and of hope, to come to me. Yet,
spite of my crying, she stayed out there upon the sea, and only shook
her head, sorrowfully; but, in her eyes was the old earth-light of
tenderness, that I had come to know, before all things, ere we
were parted.

"At her perverseness, I grew desperate, and essayed to wade out to her;
yet, though I would, I could not. Something, some invisible barrier,
held me back, and I was fain to stay where I was, and cry out to her in
the fullness of my soul, 'O, my Darling, my Darling--' but could say no
more, for very intensity. And, at that, she came over, swiftly, and
touched me, and it was as though heaven had opened. Yet, when I reached
out my hands to her, she put me from her with tenderly stern hands, and
I was abashed--"

THE FRAGMENTS[2]

(_The legible portions of the mutilated lea