not able to
touch her, and she was still unaware of his presence.

Suddenly a whole flood of light and the truth burst upon him. He had
passed painlessly and unconsciously from the dreamland of Saturn to the
shadowland of eternity. The mystery was solved. Like the dead bishop,
he had become a free spirit. His prayer was answered, and his body,
struck by lightning, lay far away on that great ringed planet. How he
longed to take in his arms the girl who had promised herself to him,
and who, he now saw, loved him with her whole heart; but he was only an
immaterial spirit, lighter even than the ether of space, and the
unchangeable laws of the universe seemed to him but the irony of fate.
As a spirit, he was intangible and invisible to those in the flesh, and
likewise they were beyond his control. The tragedy of life then dawned
upon him, and the awful results of death made themselves felt. He
glanced at Sylvia. On coming in she had looked radiantly happy; now
she seemed depressed, and even the bird stopped singing.

"Oh," he thought, "could I but return to life for one hour, to tell her
how incessantly she has been in my thoughts, and how I love her!
Death, to the aged, is no loss--in fact, a blessing--but now!" and he
sobbed mentally in the anguish of his soul. If he could but
communicate with her, he thought; but he remembered what the departed
bishop had said, that it would take most men centuries to do this, and
that others could never learn. By that time she, too, would be dead,
perhaps having been the wife of some one else, and he felt a sense of
jealousy even beyond the grave. Throwing himself upon a rug on the
floor, in a paroxysm of distress, he gazed at Sylvia.

"Oh, horrible mockery!" he thought, thinking of the spirit. "He gave
me worse than a stone when I asked for bread; for, in place of freedom,
he sent me death. Could I but be alive again for a few moments!" But,
with a bitter smile, he again remembered the words of the bishop, "What
would a soul in hell not give for but one hour on earth?"

Sylvia had seated herself on a small sofa, on which, and next to her,
he had so often sat. Her gentle eyes had a thoughtful look, while her
face was the personification of intelligence and beauty. She
occasionally glanced at his photograph, which she held in her hand.

"Sylvia, Sylvia!" he suddenly cried, rising to his knees at her feet.
"I love, I adore you! It was my longing to be with you that br