Liana played with her fingers at the veil. Evening stood in the chamber, and the silence between the lightning-flash and the thunder-clap. "Think upon Almighty God!" cried Spener. She answered not. He continued: "Of our source, and of our sea; he alone stands by thee now in the dark, when the earth, and its dwellers, and all lights of life, are sinking away beyond thy reach!" Suddenly she began, and said, with a low tone of gladness, and with words swiftly following each other, as when one talks in sleep, and with increasing rapture and rapidity, "Caroline! here, here, Caroline! This is my hand,--how beautiful thou art!" The invisible angel who had consecrated her first love, who had attended her whole life, gleamed again, like a new-risen moon, over the whole dark scene of death; and the splendor gently melted the little May night into the great spring morning of the second world. Now the veiled nun of heaven leaned, quite still, on her mother. The death-angel stood invisible and wrathful among his victims. With great wings hung the screech-owl of anguish over mortal eyes, and pecked with black beak down into the breast, and nothing was heard in the stillness but the owl. More darkly rolled the Knight's melancholy eyes to and fro in their deep sockets between the still bride and the still son; and Gaspard and the destroying angel gazed upon each other gloomily. At that moment Liana's harp sent out a clear, high, ringing tone far into the silence. The Fatal Sister who spun at her life knew the signal, checked herself, and stood up; and the sister with the scissors came. Liana's fingers ceased to play, and beneath the veil all became still and motionless. "Thy head is heavy and cold, my daughter," said the disconsolate mother. "Tear the veil away!" cried the brother; and when he drew it down, there lay Liana, peaceful and smiling beneath it, but dead,--the blue eyes open toward heaven, the transfigured mouth still breathing love, the maidenly lily-brow encircled with the flower-wreath which had sunk down around it; and pale and glorified with the moonlight of the higher world was the strange form which passed majestically forth from the midst of the puny living among its lofty dead. Then gushed the golden sun through the clouds and through all the tears, and circumfused with the blooming evening twilight, with the youthful rose-oil of his evening clouds, the faded sister of heaven; and the transfigured countenance wore again the bloom of youth. In heaven all the clouds, touched with her wings as she swept through them, burst out into long, red blossoms; and through the high, misty veil, fluttering up over the earth, glowed the thousand roses which had been strown about or sprung up on the cloud-path on which the virgin passed up over the earth to the Eternal.