we were only too glad to do
anything in our power to help in this unhappy matter."

Chan was profoundly moved when he realized that the woman whom he had
loved as his own life lay dead within a chamber only a few steps away
from his own. His passion, instead of being crushed out of his heart
by the thought that she was utterly beyond his reach, and by no
possibility could ever be more to him than a memory, seemed to grow in
intensity as he became conscious that it was an absolutely hopeless one.

On that very same evening, about midnight, when silence rested on the
monastery, and the priests were all wrapped in slumber, Chan, with a
lighted taper in his hand, stole with noiseless footsteps along the
dark passages into the chamber of death where his beloved lay.
Kneeling beside the coffin with a heart full of emotion, in trembling
accents he called upon Willow to listen to the story of his passion.

He spoke to her just as though she were standing face to face with him,
and he told her how he had fallen in love with her on the day on which
he had caught a glimpse of her as she galloped in pursuit of the fox
that had fled through the valley from the hunters. He had planned, he
told her, to make her his wife, and he described, in tones through
which the tears could be heard to run, how heart-broken he was when he
heard of her death.

"I want to see you," he continued, "for I feel that I cannot live
without you. You are near to me, and yet oh! how far away. Can you
not come from the Land of Shadows, where you are now, and comfort me by
one vision of your fair face, and one sound of the voice that would
fill my soul with the sweetest music?"

For many months the comfort of Chan's life was this nightly visit to
the chamber where his dead love lay. Not a single night passed without
his going to tell her of the unalterable and undying affection that
filled his heart; and whilst the temple lay shrouded in darkness, and
the only sounds that broke the stillness were those inexplicable ones
in which nature seems to indulge when man is removed by sleep from the
scene, Chan was uttering those love notes which had lain deeply hidden
within his soul, but which now in the utter desolation of his heart
burst forth to ease his pain by their mere expression.

One night as he was sitting poring over his books, he happened to turn
round, and was startled to see the figure of a young girl standing just
inside the door of his room.