s to me is the look on the face
of her that beckoned and warned me away. I read that glance as by the
inspiration of a moment. We had been together; together we had entered
some troubled gulf; struggled together, suffered together. Was it as
lovers torn asunder by calamity? was it as combatants forced by bitter
necessity into bitter feud, when we only, in all the world, yearned for
peace together? Oh, what a searching glance was that which she cast on
me! as if she, being now in the spiritual world, abstracted from flesh,
remembered things that I could not remember. Oh, how I shuddered as the
sweet sunny eyes in the sweet sunny morning of June--the month that was
my 'angelical'; half spring, yet with summer dress, that to me was very
'angelical'--seemed reproachfully to challenge in me recollections of
things passed thousands of years ago (old indeed, yet that were made new
again for us, because now first it was that we met again). Oh, heavens!
it came over me as doth the raven over the infected house, as from a bed
of violets sweeps the saintly odour of corruption. What a glimpse was
thus revealed! glory in despair, as of that gorgeous vegetation that hid
the sterilities of the grave in the tropics of that summer long ago; of
that heavenly beauty which slept side by side within my sister's coffin
in the month of June; of those saintly swells that rose from an infinite
distance--I know not whether to or from my sister. Could this be a
memorial of that nature? Are the nearer and more distant stages of life
thus dimly connected, and the connection hidden, but suddenly revealed
for a moment?

This lady for years appeared to me in dreams; in that, considering the
electric character of my dreams, and that they were far less like a lake
reflecting the heavens than like the pencil of some mighty artist--Da
Vinci or Michael Angelo--that cannot copy in simplicity, but comments in
freedom, while reflecting in fidelity, there was nothing to surprise.
But a change in this appearance was remarkable. Oftentimes, after eight
years had passed, she appeared in summer dawn at a window. It was a
window that opened on a balcony. This feature only gave a distinction, a
refinement, to the aspect of the cottage--else all was simplicity.
Spirit of Peace, dove-like dawn that slept upon the cottage, ye were not
broken by any participation in my grief and despair! For ever the vision
of that cottage was renewed. Did I roam in the depths of sweet p