h a loud, sweet
chant of voices that were more than human; and some rolled along in the
slow thunder of a million drums. They passed; their notes were lost in
dying echoes; and the silence once more pressed in upon me and overcame
me.

The strength within me began to fail. I felt my life ebbing at its
springs. Death drew near to me and his shape was _Silence_. He entered
at my heart, entered with a sense of numbing cold, but my brain was
still alive, I could yet think. I knew that I was drawing near the
confines of the Dead. Nay, I was dying fast, and oh, the horror of it!
I strove to pray and could not; there was no more time for prayer. One
struggle and the stillness crept into my brain. The terror passed; an
unfathomable weight of sleep pressed me down. I was dying, I was dying,
and then--nothingness!

_I was dead!_

A change--life came back to me, but between the new life and the life
that had been was a gulf and difference. Once again I stood in the
darkness of the shrine, but it blinded me no more. It was clear as the
light of day, although it still was black. I stood; and yet it was not
I who stood, but rather my spiritual part, for at my feet lay my dead
Self. There it lay, rigid and still, a stamp of awful calm sealed upon
its face, while I gazed on it.

And as I gazed, filled with wonder, I was caught up on the Wings of
Flame and whirled away! away! faster than the lightnings flash. Down I
fell, through depths of empty space set here and there with glittering
crowns of stars. Down for ten million miles and ten times ten million,
till at length I hovered over a place of soft, unchanging light, wherein
were Temples, Palaces, and Abodes, such as no man ever saw in the
visions of his sleep. They were built of Flame, and they were built of
Blackness. Their spires pierced up and up; their great courts stretched
around. Even as I hovered they changed continually to the eye; what was
Flame became Blackness, what was Blackness became Flame. Here was the
flash of crystal, and there the blaze of gems shone even through the
glory that rolls around the city which is in the Place of Death. There
were trees, and their voice as they rustled was the voice of music;
there was air, and, as it blew, its breath was the sobbing notes of
song.

Shapes, changing, mysterious, wonderful, rushed up to meet me, and bore
me down till I seemed to stand upon another earth.

"Who comes?" cried a great Voice.

"Harmachis," answered