“I tell thee, no!  And again I compel thee, speak and answer to the lord who can command his slave.  I know, though my lore fails me, and the reeds on which I leaned pierce my side,—­I know yet that it is written that the life of which I question can be saved from the headsman.  Thou wrappest her future in the darkness of thy shadow, but thou canst not shape it.  Thou mayest foreshow the antidote; thou canst not effect the bane.  From thee I wring the secret, though it torture thee to name it.  I approach thee,—­I look dauntless into thine eyes.  The soul that loves can dare all things.  Shadow, I defy thee, and compel!”

The spectre waned and recoiled.  Like a vapour that lessens as the sun pierces and pervades it, the form shrank cowering and dwarfed in the dimmer distance, and through the casement again rushed the stars.

“Yes,” said the Voice, with a faint and hollow accent, “thou canst save her from the headsman; for it is written, that sacrifice can save.  Ha! ha!” And the shape again suddenly dilated into the gloom of its giant stature, and its ghastly laugh exulted, as if the Foe, a moment baffled, had regained its might.  “Ha! ha!—­thou canst save her life, if thou wilt sacrifice thine own!  Is it for this thou hast lived on through crumbling empires and countless generations of thy race?  At last shall Death reclaim thee?  Wouldst thou save her?—­Die for her!  Fall, O stately column, over which stars yet unformed may gleam,—­fall, that the herb at thy base may drink a few hours longer the sunlight and the dews!  Silent!  Art thou ready for the sacrifice?  See, the moon moves up through heaven.  Beautiful and wise one, wilt thou bid her smile to-morrow on thy headless clay?”

“Back! for my soul, in answering thee from depths where thou canst not hear it, has regained its glory; and I hear the wings of Adon-Ai gliding musical through the air.”

He spoke; and, with a low shriek of baffled rage and hate, the Thing was gone, and through the room rushed, luminous and sudden, the Presence of silvery light.

As the heavenly visitor stood in the atmosphere of his own lustre, and looked upon the face of the Theurgist with an aspect of ineffable tenderness and love, all space seemed lighted from his smile.  Along the blue air without, from that chamber in which his wings had halted, to the farthest star in the azure distance, it seemed as if the track of his flight were visible, by a lengthened splendour in the air, like the column of moonlight on the sea.  Like the flower that diffuses perfume as the very breath of its life, so the emanation of that presence was joy.  Over the world, as a million times swifter than light, than electricity, the Son of Glory had sped his way to the side of love, his wings had scattered delight as the morning scatters dew.  For that brief moment, Poverty had ceased to mourn, Disease fled from its prey, and Hope breathed a dream of Heaven into the darkness of Despair.