she rose, and throwing back the wild hair from her throbbing temples,
she said, in a calm and mournful voice:

"Your kindness comes too late. I am dying, fast--fast. All that is left
to me in the world are these very visions, this very power--call it
delusion if you will--from which you would tear me. Nay, look not so
reproachfully, and in such wonder. Do you not know that men have in
poverty, sickness, and all outer despair, clung to a creative spirit
within--a world peopled with delusions--and called it Poetry? and that
gift has been more precious to them than all that wealth and pomp could
bestow? So," continued Lucilla, with fervid and insane enthusiasm, "so
is this, my creative spirit, my imaginary world, my inspiration, what
poetry may be to others. I may be mistaken in the truth of my belief.
There are times when my brain is cool, and my frame at rest, and I sit
alone and think over the real past--when I feel my trust shaken, and my
ardour damped: but that thought does not console but torture me, and
I hasten to plunge once more among the charms, and spells, and mighty
dreams, that wrap me from my living self. Oh, lady! bright, and
beautiful, and lofty, as you are, there may come a time when you can
conceive that even madness may be a relief. For" (and here the wandering
light burned brighter in the enthusiast's glowing eyes), "for, when the
night is round us, and there is peace on earth, and the world's children
sleep, it is a wild joy to sit alone and vigilant, and forget that we
live and are wretched. The stars speak to us then with a wondrous
and stirring voice; they tell us of the doom of men and the wreck of
empires, and prophesy of the far events which they taught to the old
Chaldeans. And then the Winds, walking to and fro as they list, bid us
go forth with them and hear the songs of the midnight spirits; for you
know," she whispered with a smile, putting her hand upon the arm of
the appalled and shrinking Constance, who now saw how hopeless was
the ministry she had undertaken, "though this world is given up to two
tribes of things that live and have a soul: the one bodily and
palpable as we are; the other more glorious, but invisible to our dull
sight--though I have seen them--Dread Solemn Shadows, even in their
mirth; the night is their season as the day is ours; they march in the
moonbeams, and are borne upon the wings of the winds. And with them,
and by their thoughts, I raise myself from what I am a