And now he prepared to quit the scene of his mystic Vision, in which he had followed with prescient pain the brief, bright career, the useless fame, the evil love-passion, and final fate of his Former Self,—­and crossing the field with lingering tread, he looked back many times to the fallen block of stone where he had sat when he had first perceived God’s maiden Edris, stepping softly through the bloom.  When should he again meet her?  Alas! ... not till Death, the beautiful and beneficent Herald of true Liberty, summoned him to those lofty heights of Paradise where she had habitation.  Not till then, unless, ... unless, ... and his heart beat with a sudden tumult as he recollected her last words, . .  “Unless the longing of thy love compels!”

Could love compel her, he wondered, to come to him once more while yet he lived on earth?  Perhaps! ... and yet if he indeed had such power of love, would it be generous or just to exert it?  No! ... for to draw her down from Heaven to Earth seemed to him now a sort of sacrilege,—­dearer to him was her joy than his own!  But suppose the possibility of her being actually happy with him in mortal existence, ... suppose that Love, when absolutely pure, unselfishly mutual, helpful, and steadfast, had it in its gift to make even the Sorrowful Star a Heaven in miniature, what then?

He would not trust himself to think of this! ... the mere shadowy suggestion of such supreme delight filled him with a strong passion of yearning, to which in his accepted creed of Self-abnegation he dared not yield!  Firmly restraining, resisting, and renouncing his own desires, he mentally raised a holy shrine for her in his soul, ... a shrine of pure faith, warm with eternal aspirations and bright with truth, wherein he hallowed the memory of her beauty with a sense of devout, love-like gladness.  She was safe.. she was content, . . she blossomed flower-like in the highest gardens of God where all things fared well;—­enough for him to worship her at a distance, . . to keep the clear reflection of her loveliness in his mind, ... and to live, so that he might deserve to follow and find her when his work on earth was done.  Moreover, Heaven to him was no longer a vague, mythical realm, ill-defined by the prosy descriptions of church-preachers,—­it was an actual world to which he was linked,—­in which he had possessions, of which he was a native, and for the perpetuation and enlargement of whose splendor all worlds existed!

Arrived at the boundary of the field, the spot marked by the broken half-buried pillar of red granite Heliobas had mentioned, he paused—­thinking dreamily of the words of Esdras, who in answer to his Angel-visitant’s inquiry:  “Why art thou disquieted?” had replied:  “Because thou hast forsaken me, and yet I did according to thy words, and I went into the field, and lo!  I have seen and yet see, that I am not able to express.”  Whereupon the Angel had said, “Stand up manfully and I will advise thee!”