Ninety-eight years brought me to a hot, languorous day, and the humid air was laden with the fragrance of flowers, glowing amid the surrounding greenery, or in riotous luxuriance, climbing over walls, trellises and windows. I had come from the Galarēs[a:], and ere entering my home I, for a little, gazed on the quiet, lovely scene. Presently a sense of drowsiness stole over me and I entered my residence and laid down to rest, perchance to sleep. For a moment I experienced a peculiar sensation; then suddenly I slept and as suddenly awakened to perceive standing near me with a smile on her lips, a wondrously beautiful woman, whose face and form seemed strangely familiar. In great surprise and unaccountable awe I gazed upon her; then, breathlessly, I cried, "Who art thou, oh vision of a dead past? Art thou a Goddess in the guise of my beloved, my lost Armēn[a:]? Speak, I implore thee, ere I die of anguish." Smilingly she drew nearer to me. Gently she stooped and clasped me in her arms. Tenderly she murmured, "Zenest[a:], knowest thou not Armēn[a:], thy wife, the mother of our children, who wait nearby to greet and embrace thee? My beloved, thou didst but sleep a moment, to awaken and find thy dearest ones. Nay, shrink not from me; I am not dead and thou dost not dream," she said. "Here are our children who will bear thee hence to the world of living ones, where is neither death or sorrowful separations, but where, with us, thou shalt learn of the immortality of the life essence and of joys beyond aught thou hast conception of." The joy and wonder of this was so great that I seemed to swoon, and, when again consciousness came to my senses I found myself in a beautiful home, surrounded by many dear ones and friends of my youth and later years, who welcomed me to the world of living ones. And wonder of marvellous wonders, my aged body had fallen away from me and I stood amid our three stately sons as young as were they. As I looked into the faces of those whom I had thought dead and forever gone into the Silence, I could not utter one word. My wife and our beauteous daughters, all with their dear arms about me, whispered words of explanation and of assurance that I did not dream. Then our dear girls, Armēn[a:] and Irmian, gathered loveliest flowers and showered them over me and their mother. They led me through the beautiful white structure they said was our home and still, while countless questions surged through my mind, I was so overwhelmed by contending emotions that I only could mutely turn from one to another. Finally I was made to comprehend the wondrous, unlooked for change which had come to me while I slept. Birth, not death, having opened the gateway of the new phase of life, gladly, reverently, I took up the threads of the tangled web and woof of a past condition, and gladly, reverently, in an existence of illimitable opportunities, I have striven to weave a fabric adorned with loving thoughts, loving words, and loving service.