"As I tell you, I was caught up,--snatched out of that black profundity with inconceivable swiftness,--and when the ascending movement ceased, I found myself floating lightly like a wind-blown leaf through twining arches of amber mist, colored here and there with rays of living flame ... I heard whispers, and fragments of song and speech, all sweeter than the sweetest of our known music, ... and still I saw nothing. Presently some one called me by name--'THEOS! ... THEOS!' I strove to answer, but I had no words wherewith to match that silver-toned, far-reaching utterance; and once again the rich vibrating notes pealed through the vaporous fire-tinted air--'THEOS, MY BELOVED! HIGHER! ... HIGHER! ... All my being thrilled and quivered to that call. I yearned to obey, ... I struggled to rise--my efforts were in vain; when, to my joy and wonder, a small, invisible hand, delicate yet strong, clasped mine, and I was borne aloft with breathless, indescribable, lightning-like rapidity--on ... on ... and ever upward, till at last, alighting on a smooth, fair turf, thick-grown with fragrant blossoms of strange loveliness and soft hues, I beheld Her! ... and she bade me welcome." "And who," questioned Heliobas, in tones of hushed reverence, "Who was this Being that thus enchants your memory?" "I know not!" replied Alwyn, with a dreamy smile of rapture on his lips and in his eyes. "And yet her face ... oh! the entrancing beauty of that face! ... was not altogether unfamiliar. I felt that I must have loved and lost her ages upon ages ago! Crowned with white flowers, and robed in a garb that seemed spun from midsummer moonbeams, she stood ... a smiling Maiden-Sweetness in a paradise of glad sights and sounds, ... ah! Eve, with the first sunrise radiance on her brows, was not more divinely fair! ... Venus, new-springing from the silver sea-foam, was not more queenly glorious! 'I WILL REMIND THEE OF ALL THOU HAST FORGOTTEN,' she said, and I understood her soft, half-reproachful accents. 'IT IS NOT YET TOO LATE! THOU HAST LOST MUCH AND SUFFERED MUCH, AND THOU HAST BLINDLY ERRED, BUT NOTWITHSTANDING ALL THESE THINGS, THOU ART MY BELOVED SINCE THESE MANY THOUSAND DAYS!'" "Days--which the world counts as years!" murmured Heliobas. "You saw no one but her?"