not hope, she dared not rejoice, lest
she should break the spell.... Again and again had she broken it at this
very point, by some sudden and tumultuous yielding to her own joy or
awe; but now her will held firm.... She did not feel her own limbs, hear
her own breath.... A light bright mist, an endless network of glittering
films, coming, going, uniting, resolving themselves, was above her
and around her.... Was she in the body or out of the body?....
...............

The network faded into an abyss of still clear light.... A still warm
atmosphere was around her, thrilling through and through her .... She
breathed the light, and floated in it, as a mote in the mid-day beam....
And still her will held firm. ...............

Far away, miles, and aeons, and abysses away, through the interminable
depths of glory, a dark and shadowy spot. It neared and grew.... A dark
globe, ringed with rainbows.... What might it be? She dared not hope....
It came nearer, nearer, nearer, touched her.... The centre quivered,
flickered, took form--a face. A god's? No--Pelagia's.

Beautiful, sad, craving, reproachful, indignant, awful.... Hypatia could
bear no more: and sprang to her feet with a shriek, to experience in
its full bitterness the fearful revulsion of the mystic, when the human
reason and will which he has spurned reassert their God-given rights;
and after the intoxication of the imagination, come its prostration and
collapse.

And this, then, was the answer of the gods! The phantom of her whom
she had despised, exposed, spurned from her! 'No, not their answer--the
answer of my own soul! Fool that I have been! I have been exerting my
will most while I pretended to resign it most! I have been the slave
of every mental desire, while I tried to trample on them! What if that
network of light, that blaze, that globe of darkness, have been, like
the face of Pelagia, the phantoms of my own imagination--ay, even of
my own senses? What if I have mistaken for Deity my own self? What if I
have been my own light, my own abyss?.... Am I not my own abyss, my own
light--my own darkness?' And she smiled bitterly as she said it, and
throwing herself again upon the couch, buried her head in her hands,
exhausted equally in body and in mind.

At last she rose, and sat, careless of her dishevelled locks, gazing
out into vacancy. 'Oh for a sign, for a token! Oh for the golden days of
which the poets sang, when gods walked among men, fought by thei