How well I was advised, in my heart, when I stayed on here—­spite of those visions and sights of unknown and unexplainable things; for, had I not stayed, then I had not seen again the face of her I loved.  Yes, though few know it, none now save my sister Mary, I have loved and, ah! me—­lost.

I would write down the story of those sweet, old days; but it would be like the tearing of old wounds; yet, after that which has happened, what need have I to care?  For she has come to me out of the unknown.  Strangely, she warned me; warned me passionately against this house; begged me to leave it; but admitted, when I questioned her, that she could not have come to me, had I been elsewhere.  Yet, in spite of this, still she warned me, earnestly; telling me that it was a place, long ago given over to evil, and under the power of grim laws, of which none here have knowledge.  And I—­I just asked her, again, whether she would come to me elsewhere, and she could only stand, silent.

It was thus, that I came to the place of the Sea of Sleep—­so she termed it, in her dear speech with me.  I had stayed up, in my study, reading; and must have dozed over the book.  Suddenly, I awoke and sat upright, with a start.  For a moment, I looked ’round, with a puzzled sense of something unusual.  There was a misty look about the room, giving a curious softness to each table and chair and furnishing.

Gradually, the mistiness increased; growing, as it were, out of nothing.  Then, slowly, a soft, white light began to glow in the room.  The flames of the candles shone through it, palely.  I looked from side to side, and found that I could still see each piece of furniture; but in a strangely unreal way, more as though the ghost of each table and chair had taken the place of the solid article.

Gradually, as I looked, I saw them fade and fade; until, slowly, they resolved into nothingness.  Now, I looked again at the candles.  They shone wanly, and, even as I watched, grew more unreal, and so vanished.  The room was filled, now, with a soft, yet luminous, white twilight, like a gentle mist of light.  Beyond this, I could see nothing.  Even the walls had vanished.

Presently, I became conscious that a faint, continuous sound, pulsed through the silence that wrapped me.  I listened intently.  It grew more distinct, until it appeared to me that I harked to the breathings of some great sea.  I cannot tell how long a space passed thus; but, after a while, it seemed that I could see through the mistiness; and, slowly, I became aware that I was standing upon the shore of an immense and silent sea.  This shore was smooth and long, vanishing to right and left of me, in extreme distances.  In front, swam a still immensity of sleeping ocean.  At times, it seemed to me that I caught a faint glimmer of light, under its surface; but of this, I could not be sure.  Behind me, rose up, to an extraordinary height, gaunt, black cliffs.