Then, looking back through the mists of the years that had gone by since then, he seemed to see the very shape of the Angel moving over the soft green sward where now the broad marble-paved roadway gleamed white beneath the trees, and to hear the musical murmur of her voice even as Richard Arnold had heard it on that eventful night.
“Alan!”
Was he dreaming, or was it the voice of his ancestress speaking to his soul in that hour of his lonely sorrow? A pale, shimmering, ghostly shape flitted across the quivering plumes of the palm-trees, dropped softly to the ground, and Alma stood before him in the well of her aerial boat.
Before his amazement had permitted him to utter a word she had stepped out and was coming towards him with outstretched hands, saying—
“They told me I should find you here. Alan, I have come to ask you to forgive me if you—before you go upon this mission of yours, if go you must.”
“To forgive you, Alma!” he exclaimed, recoiling a pace in sheer astonishment at her presence and her words. “What can I have to forgive you? Is it not rather”—
“No, Alan, it is not,” she said quickly, still holding out her hands to him and looking up at him with faintly flushed cheeks and shining eyes. “I see it all clearly now. Isma was right. It is I who have sinned against you, and it is for me to ask forgiveness.”
“How can you ask that of me, Alma? How have you harmed me?” he asked, still bewildered by her beauty and the enigmas that she spoke in, yet taking her hands, and, as if by instinct, drawing her towards him.
“I will answer that afterwards,” she said quickly, as though inspired by some sudden thought. “But tell me, first, are you quite resolved to go upon this mission?”