Then an awful despair gripped at Eric's heart, for he felt as if he had lost his dearest treasure.
Why was life so cruelly full of lights and shades? Why was the full cup always dashed from the lips?
"Father, father," he cried, "I do so long for the sound of thy voice; speak, oh, speak, I beseech thee," but there was no response; only silence deep and absolute, and a second later a faint echo of his own words whispering round the granite boulders.
Then something very wonderful was revealed to his sight; there beside the old man stood a shining translucid woman, a woman whose face he could but faintly discern.
Her head was bent back and her two uplifted arms shone like rays of light, pointing to the sky.
Her long robe flowed down, a trailing mist, into the quiet water, where it hung like a cloud. And this filmy vapour wrapped itself round the feet of the man, and as it slowly mounted towards his heart a marvellous change came over the aged hermit; his astounded pupil saw how very gradually all the years rolled from him, how his bent figure became upright, and for a short moment the vision of a manly face full of strength and beauty flashed before his eyes, and then ... everything was gone! A gust of wind swept the whole miracle into the dark lake, where a cloud of smoke alone remained.
The smoke hovered for a second, blue grey over the face of the deep; and then out of the very centre shot a quivering flame, intense and dazzling, that mounted slowly like a tongue of fire, always higher and higher, till it was lost from sight!
XIX
My eager hands press emptiness to my heart, and it bruises my breast.