Thoroughly exhausted by the effort, I returned to my study and threw myself upon a sofa. More fully than ever before, I entered that state where one far distant may make himself perceived and known. The occult power of foreknowing events, the delicate perception of forbidden things, worked their abnormal invigoration in the brain. I became conscious that a carriage miles off was rolling nearer and nearer; I knew that it would stop at my door. I waited, waited long into the night. One by one went out the scattered village-lights. Another consciousness of twenty years seemed compressed into those brilliant, bitter hours. My lamp flickered. I rose with effort and supplied oil; it would now burn till morning. The carriage came nearer. I knew that Vannelle was in it. At last the heavy rumble ceased at the door. A figure stood before me. The old fascination in the eyes; a soul burning with lofty enthusiasm looked through and kindled them. But the face,--it was ghastly, livid as the face of a leper: it was spectral,--blanched and dried with the white flames of his exalted vigils. Ah, black eyes, well may you shine in terrible triumph! The old idolatry this man demanded of me would not be repelled. I gazed upon my visitor as upon a phantom from another sphere, and knew no reckoning of time. His magnetism was upon me; I could only crouch into myself--and wait. At length the silence was broken. "Charles Clifton, teacher of the people, listen that you may be taught! For the last time I have come down into your world of passion and sense. The impulses with which you vainly strive and wrestle are behind me. Alone, alone, I have risen from the abysmal depths of personality. I have struggled fiercely. I have also conquered." The livid face showed no change. It suddenly came to me, that, by some voluntary disfigurement of his exquisite beauty of feature, this man had cut away the lusts for pleasure, fame, and influence. What woman would kiss that ghastly cheek? What sycophant could fawn and smirk in that chilly presence? The injunctions concerning the offending eye and hand Vannelle had interpreted literally. "I hold," he continued, "the noble prize of intellectual satisfaction seized by effort. Multiply the self-satisfactions of earth by infinity, and you may guess a little of the sublime contentment which wraps me round! Does the best stage-trick of your liberal clergy help them to anything but a plasticity of mind to be moulded into artistic forms of skepticism? How can you feel the delight of a definite, positive affirmation which accounts for and includes all creeds and lives of men? How can you come out from your partial dogmas to enter Truth and find it alone dogmatic and compulsive? Clifton, I pity you. I would rescue you from this haze of thought and feeling,--I, who have even now discarded Intelligence and enthroned Wisdom."