“Not unhappy,” she answered, with a radiant and celestial smile,——“not unhappy, since we are the servants of our beneficent Creator; we perform His will, and in that consists our happiness. We suffer no pain, no care; doing no sin, we have no sorrow; our life is a life of love to each other and to man, whose ministers we are. Are we not then happy?” “It may be so,” said Basil, thoughtfully. “Ye are the creatures of Him who never made aught but good.” And he bowed his head in deep meditation, while there arose from the mystic fire an ethereal chorus; melodiously it pealed upon the opened ears of the enraptured student. The spirits sang of praise; of the universal hymn which nature lifts up to the Origin of all good; of the perfect harmony of all His works, from the mighty planets that roll through illimitable space, down to the fresh green moss that springs up at the foot of the wayfaring child; of the world of spirits,——those essences which people the earth and float in the air like motes in the sunbeam, invisible, but yet powerful; how the good spirits strive with the fallen ones for dominion over man, and how the struggle must continue until evil is permitted to be overcome of good, and the earth becomes all holy, worthy to be the habitation of glorified beings. “Happy art thou, O man!” they sang. “Even in thy infirmity, what is like unto thee? And earthly life is thine, half the sorrow of which thou mayst remove by patience and love; an earthly death is thine, which is the entrance to immortality. It is ours to guide thee to that gate of heaven which we ourselves may never enter.” And all the spirits sang in a strain that died away as the fire sunk smouldering down, “Blessed art thou, O man!——strong in thy weakness, happy in thy sufferings. Thrice blessed art thou!” The student was roused from his trance by a light footstep. A hand was laid on his shoulder, and a soft woman’s voice whispered,—— “Art thou then here all alone, and in darkness, my Basil?” “All was light with me,——the darkness came with thee,” answered the student, harshly, like one roused from delicious slumbers by an unwelcome hand;——and yet the hand was none other than Isilda’s. “Once thou used to call me thy light of life, Basil,” murmured the girl. “I would not come to anger thee.” It was too dark to discern faces; but as Isilda turned to depart, Basil thought she was weeping, and his heart melted. What would he not have given, at the moment, for the days of old,——the feelings of old, when he would have drawn her to his bosom, and soothed her there with the assurances of never-ending love. But now he dared not; the link between him and earth was broken. He thought of the immortal gift just acquired, and he would not renounce its ecstatic joys,——no, not even for Isilda. He took her hand kindly, but coldly, saying,—— “Forgive me; I have been studying,——dreaming; I did not mean to say thou wert unwelcome.”