engaged in an intrigue. In his case, however, the possible end
of his ill-doing was not the divorce-court, but an asylum, or so some
observers would have anticipated. Yet did man ever adore a mistress so
fatal and destroying as this poor shadow of the dead which he desired?

It was not until New Year's Eve that Stella came again. Once more
enervated and exhausted by the waves, Morris sank into a doze whence, as
before, he was awakened by the sound of heavenly music to which, on
this night, was added the scent of perfume. Then he opened his eyes--to
behold Stella. As she had been at first, so she was now, only more
lovely--a hundred times lovelier than the imagination can paint, or the
pen can tell. Here was nothing pale or deathlike, no sheeted, melancholy
spectre, but a radiant being whose garment was the light, and whose eyes
glowed like the heart of some deep jewel. About her rolled a vision of
many colours, such hues as the rainbow has fell upon her face and about
her hair. And yet it was the same Stella that he had known made perfect
and spiritual and, beyond all imagining, divine.

Once more he addressed--implored her, and once more no answer came; nor
did her face change, or that wondrous smile pass from her lips into the
gravity of her eyes. This, at least, was sure; either that she no longer
had any understanding knowledge of his earthly tongue, or that its
demonstration was to her a thing forbidden. What was she then? That
double of the body which the Egyptians called the _Ka_, or the soul
itself, the {preuma}, no eidolon, but the immortal _ego_, clothed in
human semblance made divine?

Why was there no answer? Because his speech was too gross for her to
hearken to? Why did she not speak? Because his ears were deaf? Was this
an illusion? No! a thousand times. When he approached she vanished, but
what of it? He was mortal, she a spirit; they might not mix.

Yet in her own method she did speak, spoke to his soul, bidding the
scales fall from its eyes so that it might see. And it saw what human
imagination could not fashion. Behold those gardens, those groves that
hang upon the measureless mountain face, and the white flowers which
droop in tresses from the dark bough of yonder towering poplar tree, and
the jewelled serpent nestling at its root.

Oh! they are gone, and when the flame-eyed Figure smote, the vast,
barring, precipices fall apart and the road is smooth and open.

How far? A million miles? No, tw