"You call THIS dreaming," he inquired with a slight smile, pointing to the table strewn with manuscript on which the ink was not yet dry. "Then dreams are more productive than active exertion! Here is goodly matter for printers! … a fair result it seems of one morning's labor!"
Alwyn started up, seized the written sheets, and scanned them eagerly.
"It is my handwriting!" he muttered in a tone of stupefied amazement.
"Of course! Whose handwriting should it be?" returned Heliobas, watching him with scientifically keen, yet kindly interest.
"Then it IS true!" he exclaimed. "True—by the sweetness of her eyes,—true, by the love-lit radiance of her smile!—true, O thou God whom I dared to doubt! true by the marvels of Thy matchless, wisdom!"
And with this strange outburst, he began to read in feverish haste what he had written. His breath came and went quickly,—his cheeks flushed, his eyes dilated,—line after line he perused with apparent wonder and rapture,—when suddenly interrupting himself he raised his head and recited in a half whisper:
"With thundering notes of song sublime I cast my sins away from me—On stairs of sound I mount—I climb! The angels wait and pray for me!
"I heard that stanza somewhere when I was a boy … why do I think of it now? SHE has waited,—so she said,—these many thousand days!"
He paused meditatively,—and then resumed his reading, Heliobas touched his arm.
"It will take you some time to read that, Mr. Alwyn," he gently observed. "You have written more than you know."