nor mirth; it had sprung to the cloud-capped point of human
genius, and its sublimity would prove its barrier to the world's
approval. But it would give him fame when--God! what was that thought?
The manuscript of that poem had lain in the room where he had met
his death. Had the hand that had slain him executed a more terrible
vengeance still? Oh, it could not be! No man would be so base. And
yet, what mercy had he the right to expect? And the nature of the
man--cold--relentless--To consign the man who had wronged him to
eternal oblivion--would he not feel as he watched the ashes in the
brazier, that such vengeance was sweeter than even the power to
kill? And he was impotent! He was a waif tossed about in the chaos
of eternity, with no power to smite the man whose crime
had--perhaps--been greater than the thrusting of two lives from
existence a few years before their time. He was as powerless as the
invisible beggar who floated at his side. And that man was on earth
yet, perchance, coldly indifferent in his proud position, inwardly
gloating at the fullness of his revenge....

Years, years, years! They slipped from his consciousness like water
from the smooth surface of a rock. And yet each had pressed more
heavily and stung more sharply than the last. Oh, if he could but
know that his poem had been given to the world--that it had not been
blotted from existence! This was what was meant by Hell. No torture
that man had ever pictured could approach the torments of such regret,
such uncertainty, such pitiable impotence. Truly, if his sin had been
great, his punishment was greater.

But why was he going downward? What invisible hand was this which was
resistlessly guiding him through the portals of the shadow land, past
the great sun and worlds of other men, and down through this quivering
ether? What? He was to be born again? A bit of clay needed an atom of
animate force to quicken it into life, and he must go again? And it
was to the planet Earth he was going? Ah! his poem! his poem! He
could write it again, and of what matter the wasted generations? And
Sioned--they would meet again. Sooner or later, she too must return,
and on Earth they would find what had been denied them above. What
was that? His past must become a blank? His soul must be shorn of its
growth? He must go back to unremembering, unforseeing infancy, and
grow through long, slow years to manhood again? Still, his genius
and his intelligence in their e