And so the green spring and the flowery summer passed, and autumn drew on.
Then came a day of days—a soft October day when merely to exist was to be happy and to hope. And new life, like some sweet, rejuvenating cordial seemed to enter and course through the veins of The Dreamer and for the first time since the Silence and the Solitude had enveloped the cottage he laughed as he flung wide the windows of the chamber that had been the chamber of death, to let in the day. And as he looked forth he said, again quoting the words of his "Morella,"
"The winds lie still in heaven. There is a dim moisture over all the earth and a warm glow upon the waters, and upon the forest a rainbow—a bow of promise—from the firmament has surely fallen. It is not a day for sorrow but for joy, for it is a day out of Aidenn itself, and I feel that ere it has passed I shall hold sweeter, more real communion with her that is in Aidenn than ever before."
He went forth and wandered through the radiance of that perfect day hours on hours, and as he paced the solemn aisles of the pine wood, or strolled along the river walk which was veiled in a golden haze and carpeted thick with the yellow and crimson and brown leaves of October, he heard, clearly, the sound of the swinging of the censers of the angels, as his senses were bathed in the holy perfume, and the zephyrs that blew about his brow were laden with audible sweet murmurs.
As evening fell a pleasant languor possessed his limbs—a wholesome weariness from his long wanderings—and he lay down upon a bank littered with fallen leaves and slept. And as he slept in the fading light, the spirit of Virginia approached him more nearly—more tangibly—than ever before; and finally, when the red sun had sunk into the river, and when the afterglow in the sky and the rainbow that lay upon the forest were alike blotted out by the shadows of night, and the moon—a lustrous blur through the haze—wandered uncertainly up the sky, she drew nearer and nearer, and pressed a fluttering kiss—such a kiss as a butterfly might bestow upon a flower—upon his lips; then, sighing, drew away.
The sleeper awoke with a start—a start of heavenly bliss followed by instant pain—for as he peered into the night he saw that he was alone—with the Silence and the Solitude. The winds lay still in heaven and bore him no whisper or sigh. The perfume from the censers of the angels still filled the air, but he was conscious of a great void—a pain unbearable. The kiss had awakened a thousand thronging memories; the kiss had robbed of their charm the elusive perfume, and the ghostly whisper of fluttering garments, and the shadowy foot-falls, and the faint, faraway sighs. Henceforth these would cease to satisfy. The kiss had made him know the want of his heart for love and companionship, such as the living Virginia had given him.
He listened and listened, but the winds lay still in heaven, and he was alone with the Silence—the dread Silence—and the heart-hunger, and the despair.
Then he arose from his bed of withered and sere leaves and as one distraught, wandered through the shadows of the misty, weird night. In the wood and by the waters he wandered, while the night wore on and the moon held its way—still a lustrous blur in the heavens.
On, on he wandered, seeking peace for his soul and finding none, till the moon was out and the stars fainted in the twilight of the approaching day, when lo, above the end of the path through the wood, the morning star—"Astarte's bediamonded crescent"—arose upon his vision!