"Yes,--the field is 'barren and dry' enough in all conscience!" he murmured listlessly--"But as for the 'silver eyes' and the 'signs and wonders,' they must have existed only in the venerable Prophet's imagination, just as my flower-crowned Angel-maiden exists in mine. Well! ... now, Theos Alwyn" ... he continued, apostrophizing himself aloud,--"Are you contented? Are you quite convinced of your folly? ... and do you acknowledge that a fair Dream is as much of a lie and a cheat as all the other fair-seeming things that puzzle and torture poor human nature? Return to your former condition of reasoning and reasonable skepticism,--aye, even atheism if you will, for the materialists are right, ... you cannot prove a God or the possibility of any purely spiritual life. Why thus hanker after a phantom loveliness? Fame--fame! Win fame! ... that is enough for you in this world, ... and as for a next world, who believes in it?--and who, believing, cares?" Soliloquizing in this fashion, he set his foot on Ardath itself, determining to walk across and around it from end to end. The grass was long and dry, yet it made no rustle beneath his tread ... he seemed to be shod with the magic shoes of silence. He walked on till he reached about the middle of the field, where perceiving a broad flat stone near him, he sat down to rest. There was a light mist rising,--a thin moonlit-colored vapor that crept slowly upward from the ground and remained hovering like a wide, suddenly-spun gossamer web, some two or three inches above it, thus giving a cool, luminous, watery effect to the hot and arid soil. "According to the Apocrypha, Esdras 'sat among the flowers,'" he idly mused--"Well! ... perhaps there were flowers in those days,--but it is very evident there are none now. A more dreary, utterly desolate place than this famous 'Ardath' I have never seen!" At that moment a subtle fragrance scented the still air, ... a fragrance deliciously sweet, as of violets mingled with myrtle. He inhaled the delicate odor, surprised and confounded. "Flowers after all!" he exclaimed.... "Or maybe some aromatic herb..." and he bent down to examine the turf at his feet. To his amazement he perceived a thick cluster of white blossoms, star-shaped and glossy-leaved, with deep golden centres, wherein bright drops of dew sparkled like brilliants, and from whence puffs of perfume rose like incense swung at unseen altars! He looked at them in doubt that was almost dread, ... were they real? ... were these the "silver eyes" in which Esdras had seen "signs and wonders"? ... or was he hopelessly brain-sick with delusions, and dreaming again?