“The night was far spent ere I reached my home. My husband came soon after. I heard him enter his chamber, and for a long time I listened to the sound of his heavy steps as he paced the floor. At last he threw himself on the bed, and then all was still. Nature could endure no more, and I fell asleep. Wild and terrible were the visions that flitted around my couch. I was in a vast banqueting-hall, and with me the companions of the last night’s revel. Again I saw the flowers, the lights, the bright, happy faces, and again the dancers whirled by me. The night waned, the stars went out one by one, and daylight shone in on the dying lamps; yet still those wild revelers flew by me. The sun rose up and shed his fervent beams upon us. The flowers faded, and the faces of the dancers grew wan, and one by one they dropped down and died. The twilight crept over the hills, and night came on—not radiant with stars, and redolent with the breath of flowers, but horribly dark—the realization of impenetrable gloom. And slowly from out of that blackness came forth the form of a woman, clothed in white, and grasping a lyre, from the strings of which she drew forth no sound. Over her head a veil was thrown, hiding her face, and descending in wavy folds to her feet. She moved not, breathed not—all was still as the silence of the tomb. “Light rose no more upon me, but I saw all things in that deep darkness more distinctly than ever. _Years_ passed over me. I saw the finger of Time smite the walls of my prison-house, and they crumbled to dust. The grass grew up from the decaying floor, and became longer and longer, till its dull rustling answered to the moaning wind. From the dust of those beings, once so full of life and loveliness, the ivy weed sprung and wound itself round the roofless pillars till the vast charnel-house was green and beautiful as a garden. “Then there came around me, as I stood there in my awful solitude, faces and forms that looked out fitfully from the darkness, and then disappeared. They wandered around, they stood beside me, some gazing on me with pale, spiritual faces, bright, yet mournful in their loveliness, and some with the countenances of fiends, that laughed horribly at my desolation. And there was one form that took its place beside that marble figure, and fixed upon me the glance of its dark eyes, reaching forth its hands as if in vain efforts to approach me. Amid a thousand phantoms I should have known him—it was Gerald.