A wild sea! Gloomily grey and grand in its onsweeping wrath, its huge billows rose and fell like moving mountains convulsed by an earthquake,—light and shadow combated against each other in its dark abysmal depths and among its toppling crests of foam—I could hear the savage hiss and boom of breakers dashing themselves to pieces on some unseen rocky coast far away,—and my heart grew cold with dread as I beheld a ship in full sail struggling against the heavy onslaught of the wind on that heaving wilderness of waters, like a mere feather lost from a sea-gull's wing. Flying along like a hunted creature she staggered and plunged, her bowsprit dipping into deep chasms from which she was tossed shudderingly upward again as in light contempt, and as she came nearer and nearer into my view I could discern some of the human beings on board—the man at the wheel, with keen eyes peering into the gathering gloom of the storm, his hair and face dashed with spray,—the sailors, fighting hard to save the rigging from being torn to pieces and flung into the sea,—then—a sudden huge wave swept her directly in front of me, and I saw the two distinct personalities that had been so constantly presented to me during this strange experience,—THE MAN WITH THE FACE OF SANTORIS—THE WOMAN WITH MY OWN FACE SO TRULY REFLECTED that I might have been looking at myself in a mirror. And just now the resemblance to us both was made more close and striking than it had been in any of the previous visions—that is to say, the likenesses of ourselves were given almost as we now existed. The man held the woman beside him closely clasped with one arm, supporting her and himself, with the other thrown round one of the shaking masts. I saw her look up to him with the light of a great and passionate love in her eyes. And I heard him say:—
"The end of sorrow and the beginning of joy! You are not afraid?"
"Afraid?" And her voice had no tremor—"With you?"
He caught her closer to his heart and kissed her not once but many times in a kind of mingled rapture and despair.
"This is death, my beloved!"—he said.
And her answer pealed out with tender certainty. "No!—not death, but life!—and love!"
A cry went up from the sailors—a cry of heartrending agony,—a mass of enormous billows rolling steadily on together hurled themselves like giant assassins upon the frail and helpless vessel and engulfed it—it disappeared with awful swiftness, like a small blot on the ocean sucked down into the whirl of water—the vast and solemn greyness of the sea spread over it like a pall—it was a nothing, gone into nothingness! I watched one giant wave rise in a crystalline glitter of dark sapphire and curl over the spot where all that human life and human love had disappeared,—and then—there came upon my soul a sudden sense of intense calm. The great sea smoothed itself out before my eyes into fine ripples which dispersed gradually into mist again—and almost I found my voice—almost my lips opened to ask: "What means this vision of the sea?" when a sound of music checked me on the verge of utterance—the music of delicate strings as of a thousand harps in heaven. I listened with every sense caught and entranced—my gaze still fixed half unseeingly upon the heavy grey film which hung before me—that mystic sky-canvas upon which some Divine painter had depicted in life-like form and colour scenes which I, in a sort of dim strangeness, recognised yet could not understand—and as I looked a rainbow, with every hue intensified to such a burning depth of brilliancy that its light was almost intolerably dazzling, sprang in a perfect arch across the cloud! I uttered an involuntary cry of rapture—for it was like no earthly rainbow I had ever seen. Its palpitating radiance seemed to penetrate into the very core and centre of space,—aerially delicate yet deep, each separate colour glowed with the fervent splendour of a heaven undreamed of by mere mortality and too glorious for mortal description. It was the shining repentance of the storm,—the assurance of joy after sorrow—the passionate love of the soul rising upwards in perfect form and beauty after long imprisonment in ice-bound depths of repression and solitude—it was anything and everything that could be thought or imagined of divinest promise!
My heart beat quickly—tears sprang to my eyes—and almost unconsciously I pressed the kind, strong hand that held mine. It trembled ever so slightly—but I was too absorbed in watching that triumphal arch across the sky to heed the movement. By degrees the lustrous hues began to pale very slowly, and almost imperceptibly they grew fainter and fainter till at last all was misty grey as before, save in one place where there were long rays of light like the falling of silvery rain. And then came strange rapidly passing scenes as of cloud forms constantly shifting and changing, in all of which I discerned the same two personalities so like and yet so unlike ourselves who were the dumb witnesses of every episode,—but everything now passed in absolute silence—there was no mysterious music,—the voices had ceased—all was mute.
Suddenly there came a change over the face of what I thought the sky—the clouds were torn asunder as it were to show a breadth of burning amber and rose, and I beheld the semblance of a great closed Gateway barred across as with gold. Here a figure slowly shaped itself,—the figure of a woman who knelt against the closed barrier with hands clasped and uplifted in pitiful beseeching. So strangely desolate and solitary was her aspect in all that heavenly brilliancy that I could almost have wept for her, shut out as she seemed from some mystic unknown glory. Round her swept the great circle of the heavens—beneath her and above her were the deserts of infinite space—and she, a fragile soul rendered immortal by quenchless fires of love and hope and memory, hovered between the deeps of immeasurable vastness like a fluttering leaf or flake of snow! My heart ached for her—my lips moved unconsciously in prayer:
"O leave her not always exiled and alone!" I murmured, inwardly—"Dear
God, have pity! Unbar the gate and let her in! She has waited so long!"