"Do you remember the remark of the child Goethe, when his young reason was perplexed by attempting to reconcile the terrible earthquake at Lisbon with the idea of infinite goodness? 'God knows very well that an immortal soul cannot suffer from mortal accident.' With similar faith there came to me tranquil restoration. The deluge of passion rolled back, and from the wreck of my Eden arose a new and more spiritual creation. But forgetfulness was never possible. In the maddening turbulence of my grief and the ghastly stillness of its reaction, the lovely spirit which had become a part of my life seemed to have fled to the inner temple of my soul, breaking the solitude with glimmering ray and faint melodious murmur. And when I could bear to look and listen, it grew brighter and more palpable, until at last it attended me omnipresently, consoling, cheering, and stimulating to nobler thought and action. "Nor was it a ghost summoned by memory, or the airy creation of fancy. One evening an incident occurred which will test your credulity, or make you doubt my sanity. I sat alone, and reading,--nothing more exciting, however, than a daily newspaper. My health was perfect, my mind unperturbed. Suddenly my eye was arrested by a cloud passing slowly back and forth several times before me, not projected upon the wall, but floating in the atmosphere. I looked around for the cause, but the doors and windows were closed, and nothing stirred in the apartment. Then I saw a point of light, small as a star at first, but gradually enlarging into a luminous cloud which filled the centre of the room. I shivered with strange coldness, and every nerve tingled as if touched by a galvanic battery. From the tremulous waves of the cloud arose, like figures in a dissolving view, the form and features of my lost love,--not radiant as when I last looked upon them, but pale and anguish-stricken, with clasped hands and tearful eyes; and upon my ears fell, like arrows of fire, the words, _You have been the cause of all this; oh, why did you not'_--The question was unfinished, and from my riveted gaze, half terror, half delight, the vision faded, and I was alone.