He entered with affected friendliness of manner, and congratulated me on my happy escape from the world of shadows. He hoped, with sanctimonious earnestness, that after this solemn warning, I would discard all my pagan ideas and proclivities, and consecrate my whole soul to the service of the only true and living God. I told him that I was rather to be pitied than congratulated on returning to a world so vastly inferior in beauty, peace, and joy to the one I had visited. I told him also that I had been instructed in the true doctrine of God in the world of spirits, and that I had seen the terrible dangers which were impending over the Jewish people and church on account of the blindness and wickedness of their hearts. “You will be delighted to hear,” I continued, “that my guide and instructor was my beloved father, who passed from the wilderness into heaven, exchanging a poor leprous body for the radiant form of an angel.” Whether my looks and tones displeased him, or my statements aroused his anger; or whether the sphere of truth, like the revealing light of heaven, compelled him to show himself in his true colors; Magistus dropped the mask, scowled upon me with a face full of hateful passion, and retired, turning at the door to exclaim: “Beware, young man! lest this pretended resurrection prove the cause of your real death.” I had hardly felt myself in full and healthful possession of my natural body again, when I made inquiries after that beautiful and fascinating woman, the love of whom, unrequited and consuming, had been the principal cause of my death. One might suppose that after my strange experience with Helena or her attendant demon—an experience seemingly designed to apprise me of her true character—she would have been the last person on earth I desired to see. Alas! it was not so. The enchantments of the senses strike deep into the soul. The dream of love first engendered in the fervid brain of youth is not easily forgotten. Her beautiful face and bewitching figure were constantly before me. And it was with the deepest anguish that I heard she had fled from her father and friends, and had gone down into Egypt with Simon Magus. I found it impossible to turn my thoughts from this Greek siren whose own evil passions had thus borne her out of my reach, and to concentrate them upon that other woman whom Providence had decreed to be my eternal partner, and who was silently, painfully, unconsciously, co-operating with me in building that palace in the architectural heaven of my tribe.