I.

The term was over, and William Maybold had got his double first.

Under certain circumstances, and especially in youth, the mind becomes abnormally sensitive to impressions of all kinds. Severe and long-continued study, a light diet, lack of exercise, and a superfluity of anxiety, had combined to bring my mental man into a condition somewhat resembling the ascetic ecstasy ascribed to the monks of old time—a condition in which the young men see visions and the old men dream dreams. In other words, I had overworked myself, and my health, never very robust, now seemed to run some risk of breaking down altogether. My brain was in a state of nervous exaltation; my hands were thin and tremulous; my nights were disturbed by strange dreams, and even by occasional somnambulism; and I no longer felt energy to undertake the long walks which had been my panacea for bodily ailments. It seemed likely that my university honours might turn out to have been bought at too high a price.

My doctor, having felt my pulse, furnished me with the somewhat gratuitous information that what I needed was rest—rest absolute and persistent, bodily and mental: to dream beneath green trees; to linger by still waters; to forget that such things as books and knowledge existed; to think of nothing, and converse with nobody more stimulating than birds, beasts, country yokels, and speckled trout. Anything in the shape of newspapers, railways, days of the week or month, or, in fact, of time and civilisation in general, were to be entirely ignored. I was to establish a sort of rural eternity for myself, and to forget that such a thing as a nineteenth century had ever been born.

I was wholly persuaded of the soundness of this advice; the trouble was, I had not 'go' enough left in me to follow it. I wanted somebody to give me a shove in the required direction. Unfortunately, I was almost alone in the world, and could think of no quarter whence the external impetus might be expected. I had made few intimate friends in the university, and none of a temperament at once idle and energetic enough to provide the sort of companionship I needed. I was an only child, and my widowed mother had died about a year previous, leaving me an empty house somewhere in the suburbs of London, a comfortable competence, and no relations that I could remember ever to have seen. I was as solitary in the midst of the populous earth as if I had changed places with the man in the moon.

I was doing my situation less than justice, however. Just as I had begun to subside into I know not what sluggish depths of despondency, I received a letter which put a new face upon matters, and lent a fillip to my jaded mood such as awakened me to something like liveliness. The letter was from an uncle of mine, whose very existence had been almost mythical to me, for he was a recluse and an eccentric, who never went anywhere, and lived in an out-of-the-way place, where nobody ever went. As his communication was brief and to the point, I will give it here at full length:

I allowed myself no doubts as to this invitation, but wrote an acceptance by return of post. The rest of the day was spent in packing my trunk and making arrangements for my absence. It was only on the evening preceding departure, when all preparations were complete, that I found time to sit down and recall what little I knew of my uncle Philip, and to forecast the kind of life I might expect with him. He was my mother's brother, and I remember hearing that he had quarrelled with her on the occasion of her marriage some twenty-five years ago. Later on, he had himself married, but his wife had died in childbirth within the year, leaving him with an infant daughter—presumably the Diana referred to in his letter. But 'Diana—and the stars'—what was the meaning of that? Was my worthy relative a dabbler in astrology—a devotee of forbidden sciences? The idea moved me strangely. I had always been an imaginative youth, and nothing had stimulated the boyish poetry of my nature so much as the beauty and mystery of the heavenly bodies. I loved to speculate as to whether they were inhabited, and, if so, by what sort of beings: I loved to believe that they exercised some inscrutable influence over human destinies; that, at all events, the fortunes of our earth were connected with them in some manner whereof the attraction of gravitation was but the material symbol. Such speculations used to inspire me with a feeling at once of insignificance and of exaltation; and I deemed that my life could not be spent more wisely and worthily than in pondering over these secrets of the stars, and striving to solve the problem of their affinity with man. As I grew up, however, the course of my education drew me away from the region of these fancies; not without a vague sentiment of disappointment, I learned to open the gates of practical knowledge with the key of inductive reasoning; and the mystic enchantment of those heavenly suns and planets was half destroyed by the rude facts of spectrum analysis, and the ingenious calculations of distances, orbits, and dimensions. Astronomy, with its certainties and its syllogisms, repelled me: it revealed too much, and yet nothing to my purpose. I hated the impertinence of him who would tell me the density of Jupiter, the composition of Sirius, and the names of the mountains in the moon. To my sense, such petty knowledge was worse than no knowledge at all, and I was shocked by the self-complacent irreverence of its professors. Better, thought I, than these were the astrologers of yore, with their statistical ignorance, their spiritual insight, and their humble faith. They, at least, appreciated the awful solemnity that should attend the thought of other worlds, material, perhaps, as our own, yet for ever separated from us by a chasm as profound and as mysterious as death. Away with the modern man of science, ready primed with his dapper theories, who cares not to meditate upon the divine reason which placed that eternal gulf between the moon and us, but fancies he has disposed of the whole matter by informing us just how many miles and furlongs it measures across! Can he learn no loftier lesson from the ghastly majesty of that weird sphere?

With such prejudices against astronomy as distinguished from astrology, it is no wonder that I shunned the former as much as possible, both at school and at college. Though I could not avoid acquiring a certain familiarity with the phraseology and the general principles of the science, what I learned took no root in my mind, but remained lifeless and barren. It was my intention to improve the earliest opportunity of clearing it out altogether, and then to endeavour to regain, so far as might be possible, the poetical superstitions of my earlier time. Deliberate recantations of this kind are not, however, so practical as we fain would have them, and, until I read that chance sentence about the stars in my uncle's letter, I had really bestowed little or no serious consideration upon the matter. But his words, and the memories and reflections to which they gave rise, produced in me a singular excitement, which my abnormal state of health doubtless did much to foster. My sleep that night was more than usually disturbed, and when, the next day, I started for my uncle's house, I was in a tremor of indefinite expectation that was anything but healthful.

II.

The railway station at which I alighted was, the porter told me, about seven miles distant from Mr. Norman's place. This information rather staggered me, as there were no cabs in that part of the world, and walking, for one in my state of health, was quite out of the question. Just then, however, a country waggon drove up to the station door, with a stout, serviceable bay mare between the shafts. The elderly farmer who handled the reins threw them on the mare's back, and, clambering to the ground, faced about and abruptly asked me whether I were William Maybold.

'Yes,' I said, amused at his rustic bluntness; 'were you sent here by Mr. Philip Norman?'

'I'm to drive you to his house,' replied the man, gruffly. 'Get up, sir. Got any luggage?'

'Only that trunk; can you lift it?'

I needed scarcely have asked the question. My farmer, though not of any great height, was as broad and muscular as an old Roman gladiator, and he swung the trunk into the back of the waggon as easily as if it had been a lady's handbox. He was in every respect a fine type of the men of that region. His face was dark, and ruggedly moulded, and the deep lines which traversed it gave it an expression of sternness, which the gruffness of his tones in speaking seemed to confirm. His grizzled black hair was cropped short round the lower part of his head; the crown—as I noticed when he took off his hat to wipe his forehead—was bald; and he wore a great shaggy beard like a prophet. But the remarkable features of his face were his eyes, which were large and dark, and had the steady, distant look in them that is often observable in the eyes of seafaring men. They seemed to have beheld sights beyond ordinary human ken.

'I suppose you know Mr. Norman?' I said to my companion as we drove away.

'Yes; I have charge of his garden.'

'He sees very little of the world, I believe?'

'There are more worlds than one, young man.'

As I did not know exactly what to make of this reply, I was silent, and gave my attention to the country through which we were passing. It was fertile, and rich in verdure, but the houses were very scarce. The road we were travelling wound considerably, but constantly ascended, and bade fair to land us at last on the summit of a commanding eminence. The prospect constantly widened around us as we proceeded, and its beauty, as it reposed in the mellow splendour of the afternoon sunshine, so wrought upon me that at length I let slip some exclamation of delight.

'Can a Cockney care for this?' demanded the farmer, fixing his eyes upon me for a moment.

'I'm not infatuated with London,' I answered, laughing. 'I've travelled farther away from it than this, before now.'

'Ay, London's not the world, young man, and the world is not the universe,' rejoined my companion, whom I now began to recognise as a 'character.' After a pause, he added, 'Have you seen the Alps?'

'More than once.'

'What did they make you feel?'

'I think their loneliness and silence impressed me most. I felt that they were very mighty, and I very little.'

For what reason I could not imagine, this answer appeared to please the dark-browed farmer. He nodded his head once or twice, and murmured in a deep, inward voice 'Ay—right—right! But there are mountains wilder, and mightier, and lonelier than they.'

'You are a traveller yourself, then?' I exclaimed, surveying him with a new interest 'You have been a sailor, perhaps?'

'I have sailed a wide ocean and a deep one; and I have seen distant lands; yet I have never set foot off the shore of England,' was the reply.

Again I was silenced. There was something decidedly mysterious in the tone of this man's conversation. What did he mean by his talk of other worlds, and of visiting foreign countries without leaving his own? I should have set him down as perhaps a little wrong in the head, had not the stern self-possession and utter absence of extravagance in his manner discountenanced such a supposition. On the other hand, he was manifestly a man of some education and even refinement. His dress was rude enough, but his speech was accurate, and his face, despite its ruggedness, was sensitive to the play of thought within. It occurred to me that he might be a spiritualist, and that the strange lands to which he alluded might be the visions of mesmeric trance. Yet no; there was in him no trace of the morbid and unwholesome restlessness of the confirmed disciples of that unlucky science. What, then, was he?

I looked round at him as I asked this question of myself, and met those far-seeing eyes of his directed upon me with something like a grave smile lurking at their bottom. This smile quite changed the impression of his visage, illumining it with a genial light that was singularly winning. It brought a sudden memory to my mind.

'You take me for a lunatic, young man,' said he; 'well, in a certain way, perhaps I am one. You must ask your uncle.'

'I dare say he could tell me as much about you as anyone,' I replied, returning his smile; 'for I believe you are my uncle, yourself!'

'What makes you think that?'

'You smile as my mother used to do.'

At the mention of my mother his face saddened again, and he sighed; but after a moment, 'Well, my boy, you have found me out,' he said, patting me kindly on the shoulder. 'I wished to meet you as a man before I greeted you as a nephew. You seem to be an honest fellow, though you have but a flimsy body to carry your honesty about with. I am glad to see you here.'

There was so much quiet heartiness in this welcome, that I felt at home with my relative at once. He now talked with me more freely, asking many particulars about my mother and myself, and indulging in no more of those enigmatical utterances which had made him seem so questionable at first. In this manner we slowly wound our way to the top of the long acclivity, and after driving a level mile or so, I saw the summit of a lofty stone tower peering above the trees.

'That is my travelling-carriage,' said Uncle Philip, pointing to the tower with his whip. 'The house stands beside it; we shall see it when we have turned that corner.'

'His travelling-carriage!' thought I. But reflecting that all these enigmas could not fail to explain themselves under the influence of my month's sojourn, I held my peace for the present; and in another minute we had come in full view of the dwelling. It adjoined the tower, and, like it, was built of grey stone. It was an old farmhouse, of no great size, with a red-tiled roof and gabled ends; a clustered brick chimney divided the ridgepole, and two dormer-windows pushed themselves up above the low eaves. The windows beneath were cut down to the ground, and served as supplementary doors: they opened vertically, and from within was a glimpse of pleasant, low-ceiled rooms. As for the tower, which was half draped with ivy, it was evidently a much more ancient structure than the house; it must have been at least seventy feet in height, and its top rose well above the trees; and standing as it did on the highest point of ground for many a mile round about, it would overlook an amazing expanse of country.

'You are very near the moon, up there!' I remarked; and then I caught sight of a figure standing in the open doorway, which immediately commanded every faculty of my mind to the one function of looking.

III.

The waggon drew up to the door. 'Jump down, sir,' said my uncle. 'Diana,' he continued, 'this is your cousin William. I think you may trust him.'

She came forward and gave me her hand—it was soft, and smooth, and slender. She conquered me with the first glance of her great hazel eyes. Her whole figure and bearing were goddess-like, and withal completely feminine. She was well-named after the chaste huntress of mythology. I never saw a woman's form at once so stately, so supple, and so refined.

Her pale auburn hair was massed over her low forehead like the crescent moon. Her nose was straight and delicate, her cheeks oval, her mouth curved like a bow, her chin round and white. She was dressed in white, with a black bow at her throat, and a black sash round her waist; and a black velvet ribbon bound her hair. She was tall, but not too tall; and the lines of her figure were at once graceful and severe. She would have impressed me at any time and in any place; but in this secluded spot, and in my condition of peculiar sensitiveness, she came upon me almost like a being from a superior world. The ordinary daylight seemed too rude and familiar for her. She should have dwelt, methought, under the mystic influences of the moon; the original reserve and innocent dignity of her demeanour were somehow suggestive of the pure cold glamour of that strange companion of our earth.

While her father took the waggon round to the stable, she led me within doors, and made me sit down in the pleasant little parlour. It was full of the odour of flowers.

'You look tired, Cousin Will,' said she. 'It is a long way from London here.'

'It seems so, indeed. If I had journeyed to another planet, all this could not seem more fresh and delightful. Have you ever been there?'

'In London? Oh no; why should I? I was born here, and this is my home.'

True enough, London with its smoke and turmoil was no place for this young sibyl. Her beautiful feet were made to tread nothing lower than mountain-tops. I asked her whether many people visited them here.

'Last year we saw a great many—twelve, I believe,' she answered quite simply, as if the population of the earth were but a small multiple of that number. 'But they were all scientific persons, who came to find out about our discoveries. You are not scientific?'

'No, indeed! I am nothing—only a young man.'

'You are the first young man I have seen.'

'I wish I were a better specimen!' I said rather ruefully. 'They are not all like me, I assure you!'

She turned upon me the full gaze of her changing eyes, and I felt that she was looking very far into me. After a pause she said thoughtfully, 'It is strange! You look a little—yes, a great deal—like.... Are you like your mother?'

'I believe more like my father.'

She shook her head, still thoughtfully. Then, rousing herself, she said with a smile, 'You look pale and tired; but that we shall cure you of.'

'Why I begin to feel cured already, what with this pure air and—and all! But tell me, Cousin Diana, what are these discoveries you speak of?'

At this question her face became quite grave again, and she answered with a somewhat altered manner, and a lower intonation, as though touching upon a subject invested with a kind of sacredness:

'We do not speak of it to strangers—that is, we never speak of it. But you are not a stranger: and father said I might trust you: and—I think I may! Well, you shall know in good time.'

At this juncture my uncle came in.

'Now, nephew, your room is ready for you. You and Diana have had time enough to become good cousins, I hope? Very well, come up and get ready for dinner. This way!'

He conducted me along a passage to a narrow door, on opening which a winding staircase was discovered. Ascending this—a somewhat weary journey for me—my uncle paused on the third landing and ushered me into a nearly circular room, fitted and furnished with dark carved wood. Two or three dusky oil-portraits hung on the walls—which last, judging from the deep embrasures of the windows, must have been of extraordinary thickness; and the massive groined ceiling seemed designed to support a vast superincumbent weight.

'This is the lower chamber,' observed my uncle. 'As long as you stay with us it will be yours.'

'I'm not turning you out of your travelling-carriage, Uncle Philip?'

'That's overhead,' he answered, with a smile. 'After dinner, if the evening turns out clear, you may go up there, and try a little excursion.'

A light began to dawn upon my slow wits.

'It is an observatory!' I exclaimed. 'You are an astronomer?'

'Yes and no. I have been an astronomer, but only as a necessary condition to being something higher than that. But I gave it up, for the most part, years ago: I found myself growing old—my mind losing its delicacy of perception. Diana is the master now: and she—if she chooses—may indoctrinate you in the mysteries.' And nodding kindly to me, he shut the door and was gone.

He had not left me without food for reflection. I now understood—or at all events I had the key to—all that had puzzled me from the time I received his note of invitation down to the present hour. 'Diana and the stars' were to be my entertainment here: well—nothing, certainly, could so well have suited my own inclinations. The lore of the heavens, followed in such companionship, would be heavenly lore indeed! My aversion from astronomy now appeared to me unreasonable; or, rather, my uncle's words had enabled me to assign to astronomy its true place—that of an instrument to the study of 'something higher.' And Diana was the master—of this loftier science, that is. It was not likely, indeed, that my beautiful cousin would be content to spend her time in the pursuit of mere technical details; but, on the other hand, who was so fitted as she to enjoy a sort of imaginative existence among those far-shining planets, divining their strange secrets, and catching the aroma of their marvellous life? These, then, were the journeys to which my uncle had figuratively alluded; the seas that he had crossed were the profound abysses of space, and the foreign countries that he had visited were foreign in the largest sense. The longer I reflected upon the romantic conditions of this life, the more powerfully did it seize on my imagination; I seemed to have a glimpse of possibilities beyond what had hitherto been deemed the limits of human attainment; the thought of what they had perhaps dared to know made my hand tremble and my breath come fast. That discovery that Diana had mentioned—was it not some device whereby the magnifying power of the telescope had been vastly increased, enabling the student to behold sights such as man had scarcely as yet dreamed of? Oh, in that stone-built chariot of theirs, fast-bound to the whirling earth, what ineffable mysteries might not Philip Norman and Diana have explored! And now—was I to be admitted the companion of their sublime voyages?

To calm my excitement, I threw open the window, and, leaning upon the broad window-sill, looked out. The sun, swathed in clouds of golden dust, was just about to vanish behind the mighty shoulder of the glowing world. Beneath me stretched a wide and fertile plain, broken by hills, variegated with woods and fields, and dotted here and there with towns and hamlets. All the happiness and homely prosperity of human lives were there, at home in the bosom of benevolent nature, busied with lowly cares, ignorant and careless of aught beyond the familiar earth on which they were born, which yielded them food and raiment, and which at death resolved their mortal parts into itself again. Beautiful and peaceful was the prospect to look upon; beautiful and peaceful might be the lot of him who should cast his lines in those pleasant places, nor ever vex his soul with loftier things. And I myself, not longer ago than yesterday, would have been well content to settle down in some such fruitful valley, basking in the sunshine by day, sleeping dreamlessly by night, and not at any time caring to lift my eyes above the horizon rim. But that yesterday was gone for ever. To-day, in the stone chamber overhead, hung poised, I knew, the wondrous engine framed to overcome all space. What interest had this earth compared to the sights that piercing crystal eye had looked upon? Penetrating by its aid into the depths of the universe, the spirit would breathe a finer air and rise to grander heights than any known to earthly experience. Already I felt myself impatient of my corporeal trammels, and longed to push aside the veil that separated me from those far-off worlds. And now, happening to glance eastwards, I saw, pallid amidst the darkening blue, the great white moon stealing upwards like a ghost, solitary, silent, and inscrutable!

IV.

A hand laid upon my shoulder caused me to start nervously. I turned, and met the grave dark eyes of my uncle Philip.

'What are you dreaming about, young fellow?' said he. 'How pale and nervous you are! We shall have to put you on a strict regimen, I see: early hours and plenty of milk to drink. Come, let's see what sort of an appetite you can show!'

'Would not you feel rather at a loss, Uncle Philip, if the moon were to drop out of the sky some day?'

'I see your mind is running on the observatory,' he returned, with his short deep laugh. 'Ask Diana! She knows more about the moon than I do—or than anyone else does, for that matter.'

The conversation at dinner was not, however, much more transcendental than is customary on such occasions in England. Diana said but little; and her father and I kept our feet pretty constantly on terra firma; soaring but rarely beyond the attraction of gravity. The two things which chiefly affected me were, the luminous grace of my cousin's face and figure, and the airy potency of the wine, which was unlike anything I had heretofore tasted. It glowed like the warmth of a better life within my veins, and, while seeming to brace and clear my perceptive faculties, it stimulated and encouraged the poetical side of my nature. I felt, under these combined influences, as if my soul were obtaining a delightful mastery over my body. I noticed meanwhile, not without surprise, that although Diana vouchsafed to join me in more than one glass of this exquisite beverage, her father never touched it, but confined himself instead to a bottle of doubtless excellent burgundy.

'No,' he said, in answer to my remark, 'no, it is many years since I have drunk that wine. It is the wine of youth; and, for genuine youth, it possesses precious properties. Old age, whether premature or natural, finds it insipid and ineffective stuff enough. To its full enjoyment, a tender and sensitive texture of both mind and body are indispensable.'

'You are the first man who has cared to drink it,' observed Diana, looking at me. 'Generally, I have it all to myself!'

'How can anyone who has once tasted it care for other wine?' I exclaimed. 'It inspires one like beautiful music.'

'Your appreciation compliments you, nephew,' my uncle said. 'Most young fellows of your years would prefer a glass of brandy-and-water to a whole hogshead of that liquor. Among its other merits, therefore, it acts as a test of character.'

'How did you come by it?'

''Tis of a very ancient vintage,' he replied, 'and I believe every bottle of it now extant is in my cellar. It was grown in a famous comet year, and under favourable aspects of the heavenly bodies. I can remember when I used to find it an agreeable tipple, previous to taking an observation. It has—for those who can drink it—the rare quality of brightening the faculties without afterwards reacting upon them. A child could use it without injury.'

I looked at Diana, curious as to whether she had been brought up on this marvellous elixir; but, as if she had divined what was in my mind, and preferred to remain unquestioned, she arose at this point and went out, leaving her father and me to our decanters.

'You are fortunate in having made such good friends with your cousin,' he remarked. 'You are about the first man, except myself, to whom I have ever heard her volunteer an observation. Yea and nay is the sum of her speech to most of the inhabitants of this planet.'

'She is certainly not talkative,' said I, disguising the pleasure I felt at discovering that I had found favour in her sight. 'You see very little company, I believe?'

'Well, I don't seek men much, and they find little encouragement in seeking me,' returned my uncle, taking a draught of burgundy, and fixing his dark eyes upon me. 'We do not sympathise with their aims, nor they with ours. And yet, nephew, I sometimes wish that Diana could see the world. She has strange fancies: perhaps I have no right to call them mere fancies, either!'

He stopped abruptly: I was silent: presently he resumed again.

'I have tried to follow her in those strange flights of hers; if I were her own age, perhaps I might follow her after a fashion; but women are mysterious to men, especially young women like Diana—innocent as a flower, and fathomless as the ether. She is alone, quite alone, as far as human companionship goes. Ay, it might be well for her to see the world, were that possible, without the world's seeing her! I tell you, I sometimes fear the effect of this solitary life upon her—upon a girl with such a mind and heart. Heaven knows—I dare not ask—what unearthly friends she may hold communion with, up yonder in her tower!'

'I can imagine no communion so fitting for her as that of the stars,' said I.

'She was born to those studies, and has grown up in them: and she has divined secrets which no other human being has attempted. When she was born, I was full of the faith and eagerness of youth; and Diana, even as a child, showed traces of the influences that were uppermost with me. He who would fathom the stars, nephew, must needs be reverent, humble, and of a willing mind: they will not reveal themselves to self-conceit and prejudice. Age has stiffened my mental movements; the epoch of my deepest insight is gone, long since! Some rays of the great light once shone upon me; but they have faded—faded! Diana inherits all, and has made it more. Why, she is more at home among the craters of the moon than in her own boudoir!' and with this my uncle laughed again.

'She is the new daughter of the old astrology!' said I.

'Astrology? humph!' said my uncle. 'Mediæval astrology was crippled by religious superstition and intellectual darkness. But there was, no doubt, in prehistoric ages, an ancient race of men who had a profounder knowledge of this subject than modern minds are apt to imagine. From that primitive wisdom the science of ancient Egypt was a derivation—one of great subtlety and ingenuity, but lacking the celestial light of the earlier men. And the Egyptians, in turn, furnished the stock-in-trade upon which is founded the lore of our later Nostradamuses.'

'And is there truth in horoscopes and nativities?'

'They are but a paltry matter after all. There is better wisdom in the stars than that. The universe is human nature writ large; and he who learns to spell the least word of that great page will never afterwards condescend to work out horoscopes with compasses and logarithms. No: in those worlds yonder,' said my uncle, rising and sauntering towards the open window, 'live human races in every conceivable degree of development. Ay, think of that!'

'And is there most wickedness or goodness there?'

'They shine fair enough, don't they?' answered my uncle, after a short silence; 'but all their light cannot elucidate that question. You must ask your own heart; the elements of the solution are there.'

V.

It was a warm clear night, and we sat out on the balcony for an hour, smoking my uncle's excellent cigars, and sipping coffee; but our conversation died away as the shadows deepened, and for a long time no word passed between us. At length a lamp was lighted in the room—a moonlike globe of creamy glass, which contended in its homely way with the calm lustre of the great satellite that now stood high above us in the dark immutable ether. A figure was moving slowly to and fro within, which I knew, without directly looking at it, was Diana's. By-and-by she came to the window, and stood there between the lamplight and the moonlight, looking up.

'Which does she belong to?' I murmured to my uncle.

He understood me, and answered with a smile, 'The man in the moon has had it all his own way thus far; but now I shall take it kindly if you set up a wholesome rivalry with him!—Come in, nephew: I feel the dew—Diana, will you give us some music?'

She took a violin from a small table in the corner, and, sitting down where the moonlight fell into the room, she fixed her eyes dreamily upon the cold planet, and began to play. The violin, when skilfully touched, has always affected me more than any other instrument, and I had never been in so susceptible a mood as I was to-night. But ah! what music was that—so strange, so sweet, so wild! Wild it was as the far-off howling of wolves, when the moon shines upon snow-covered prairies; but organised, proportioned, and enriched by the subtle intelligence of a human musician's brain. It stirred my blood with eerie thrills; the home-like room in which I sate grew indistinct and vanished. I was alone with Diana and the music—and where were we? Not on earth, surely—not in any region where men and women ever lived and breathed. My eyes followed hers towards the moon; the white rays touched my heart and spirit, and mystically waived me thither. Slowly the burnished disc waxed larger and brighter: the fairy melody of the violin sounded keener and intenser in my ears: in the rarefied atmosphere I almost ceased to breathe: Diana was before me, but she too seemed fading out of sight: if I lost her, I should be alone in the bottomless void of space. The vibration of the strings died away....

'Drink this,' said my uncle's deep but kindly voice. 'That's it! You were within an ace of fainting dead away, my dear boy. You must be more exhausted by your journey than I thought. Hadn't you better turn in for the night?'

'It's nothing!—only a sort of—of momentary drowsiness that sometimes comes over me,' I replied, greatly mortified at such a display of my feebleness. 'I shall be all the better for it presently. As for turning in, I can't think of doing that before I've been up to see the telescope!' In saying this, I turned and met the glance of my cousin Diana. I thought—it may have been only a fancy—that she looked upon me with much more tenderness and interest than she had done heretofore. She bent down towards me, resting her beautiful hand on the arm of the sofa, close to my shoulder.

'You shall see it,' she said, in a tone so sweet and gentle that it brought the blood to my cheeks; to see her so near me made me feel warm and happy. 'You shall see what no one else has seen. But not to-night!'

'Oh, why not to-night?'

'You need strength to look at what I have to show.'

'I am not so good-for-nothing as I seem—indeed I'm not!'

'Father, do you think it would be safe?' said she, turning towards my dark-browed uncle, who was standing aside, with his arms folded, thoughtfully gazing at the lamp.

Eh?—safe?—why not?' returned he, rousing himself from his reverie. 'A peep through a telescope ought not to upset a young fellow who has seen Europe, and got a double first! Besides, my dear, you mustn't expect that he will see as much as you can!—well, at all events, you can let him see the observatory and the arrangements, and then, if it seem advisable to put off the rest till another evening, why, so be it!'

Diana stood silent a few moments, with her head lifted, in an attitude common with her, looking out into the night. Then she moved towards her father with a slow, sauntering, royal step—no other woman ever trod as she did—and, placing her hand within his arm, drew him to the window. They had some conversation together in an undertone; I did not willingly listen to it, and I cannot even be sure that what I heard was not—in part at least—the creation of my own fancy. But my invalid condition had made my hearing, as well as my other senses, preternaturally acute, and the conversation seemed to me to run somewhat thus:

'Did you see his face, as he lay there?' Diana had asked.

'Yes, my dear; a good-looking set of features enough: what then?'

'Don't jest about it, father.'

'Well, well, my dear, I see what you are driving at. Yes, there is a resemblance, certainly; I noticed it from the first; but it might occur in a dozen or twenty instances beside this one. There are more handsome fellows in the world than you think for!'

Diana smiled. 'And the day—is that an accident, too, father? And—' here she pointed upwards, apparently at a certain constellation near Orion—'is that conjunction one that might occur again?'

'Now, Diana! no fatalism! Be yourself, my little girl!'

'But ... it frightens me, father!' she murmured, with a sudden tremulousness, clinging closer to his arm, and leaning her cheek on his broad shoulder. But at this juncture, being determined to hear no more, I got up from the sofa, and, walking to the other end of the room, began to turn over a portfolio of drawings that was resting on an easel there. I had just come upon one representing a young man in a reclining posture, the right knee drawn up, the left arm hanging relaxed, and the head bowed forward in a shadow that obscured the face, rendering its contour indistinguishable:—I was just examining this sketch when my uncle and cousin, still arm-in-arm, approached.

'Your lunar passport is made out,' said the former; 'and here is the courier to guide you thither, if you feel equal to the journey. Ah!' he added, bending over the sketch that I still held in my hand, 'how does that design strike you?'

It puzzles me!' I replied. 'In the general pose it is very like a famous antique bas-relief of Endymion that I remember seeing in Rome, and which is supposed to date back to the time of Phidias.'

'An antique bas relief of the time of Phidias!' repeated my uncle, musingly. 'How now, Diana!'

'Of Endymion, did you say?' she asked, withdrawing from her fathers arm, and taking hold of the free end of the paper with a hand that quivered a little, though her voice was steady. 'And this is like it?'

'Except this, and this,' answered I, indicating certain parts of the design, 'it might have been copied directly from the bas-relief.'

'But in those parts the sketch is original, eh?' put in my uncle.

'No—not even there,' I replied; 'and that is what puzzled me. There is another design of an Endymion—an Egyptian or an Assyrian one, I forget which—but at any rate it was evidently the model of the Greek, and of course immensely more ancient. Now, though the two designs—the older and the later one—closely resemble each other in the main, there are two or three marked points of difference; and this drawing, following as it does the ancient version in those points, while in its general style it takes more after the Greek, seems to be a sort of combination of them both. Certainly,' I added, 'it is more life-like and natural than either. Where did you get it?'

'It's one of your cousin's performances,' said my uncle, carelessly.

'You have been in Europe, then?' I demanded of her, surprised.

'No!' she answered softly, with an in-drawing of the breath.

'How strange, then, that you should have independently hit upon so wonderful a likeness!' I exclaimed. 'I am more puzzled than before!'

'It is strange! and yet,' said she, with an unfathomable look in her hazel eyes, 'perhaps I may have copied it from an original older than either the Grecian or the Egyptian! Cousin Will, do you remember the faces? were they alike in both? and was there anything—anything noticeable in the features?'

It seemed to me that these last questions were asked with an especial earnestness which her low utterance could not wholly conceal. Whether or not my answer relieved her suspense I could not determine.

'No, they were not alike,' I said: 'and so far as I remember there was nothing remarkable about either of them. They simply followed the ordinary classical type of their several schools.'

'I have made a separate study of a head and face for my drawing,' she remarked, after a pause. 'Some time, perhaps, you will see it. But now, if you are ready, we will go up to the observatory.'

'Meanwhile I shall have another cigar on the balcony,' said my uncle. 'If you should wish to join me any time during the next hour or two, nephew, you will find me there.'

He grasped my hand for a moment, and then I followed Diana out of the room.

VI.

We were at the top of the tower staircase. Diana pressed against a panel at the side of the door, and it swung inwards on its hinges, easily and yet ponderously. We entered, and I found myself in a tiny antechamber, with a heavy curtain of embroidered leather in front of me. This Diana pushed aside sufficiently for me to pass on to the room beyond, while she closed the door behind.

It was a circular room, like my own chamber below, but much loftier, and without any sign of windows. A mild half-light descended from a ring of shaded lamps affixed round the walls at a height of nine feet from the floor, leaving the vaulted ceiling in shadow. The walls below the lamps were draped with a kind of tapestry of rich dark hues; and at one side stood a tall carved cabinet of black wood, furnished with a pair of folding-doors and a broad desk, upon which were books and some small instruments of polished brass. On the side opposite the cabinet was a deep niche in the stone wall, supporting a slender antique vase of embossed silver.

These particulars I noticed but passingly: that which immediately and predominantly commanded my attention was the mighty instrument which, with its appurtenances, rose pyramid-like in the centre of the room; lifting heavenward its awful eye, that had looked familiarly upon the mysterious faces of the planets, and revealed their secrets to man. The upper portion of the shaft was enveloped in the obscurity which brooded in the vault; but this dusky veil only deepened its impressiveness. Below, the softened lamplight shone upon a complex arrangement of machinery; wheels and grooves and chains, and subtle levers, all artfully contrived to turn and slide without jar or irregularity, obedient to the light touch of Diana's taper finger. She was the priestess of this temple; here were her virgin stronghold and her home. During the few moments that I had been plunged in contemplation she had thrown on, over the black silk demi-toilette which she had worn during the evening, a flowing mantle of delicate texture, dark as night, with wide drooping sleeves, and falling in soft folds from her shoulders to the floor. Upon her auburn hair she had placed a black velvet cap, such as the astrologers of old used to wear; and as she now stood before me, smiling at me out of her unfathomable nixie eyes, she looked more like an enchantress, wise with the arts of witchcraft than like a mortal maiden with warm blood and human affections. Was she a witch indeed?

'This clockwork can be adjusted so as to keep any one of the stars or planets within the field of the telescope,' said she, quietly, laying her hand upon one of the wheels. 'I have only to move this, and one of these, and then there is nothing more to be done but to sit in the chair, there, and look through the lens.'

'Shall we see the moon to-night?' I asked.

'Yes, if you like.'

She pressed a lever somewhere in the machinery, and immediately the vast tube, that seemed fixed so immovably, swung noiselessly and steadily towards the right, and, pausing there without shock or tremor, waited motionlessly as before.

'It looks at the moon now,' said Diana in a low voice.

'It obeys you as if it could hear you speak,' I responded in the same hushed tone; for as the moment of vision approached nearer, a nervousness which I could not wholly control pervaded my body, and made me fearful of betraying some symptom of unmanly agitation to my companion.

Diana touched the spring which she had before pointed out to me; then laid her finger on her lip and drew me back a step.

All the wheels were in motion; and grandly, slowly, almost imperceptibly, as the sweep of that far-distant planet which it was following in its course through space, the marvellous engine moved along its orbit. At the same moment a strain of subdued melody, resembling somewhat the music of Æolian harps heard far off, floated out and palpitated upon the still air of the vaulted room. The strain grew louder and clearer, then sank again to whisperings almost inaudible: and then once again increased in power and volume, seeming now like a chorus of angelic voices chanting a hymn of praise. I held my breath to listen, and, for a time, forgot surprise in the pure pleasure of the ear.

'What is it?' I whispered at length.

'I call it the song of the moon,' answered Diana. 'You will hear it whenever the moon's rays fall upon the glass. I love it the best of all.'

'There are others, then?'

'Each planet has its song, different from all the others: and the stars also: but those we cannot hear.'

This was said so quietly, and with an air so grave, that I knew not whether my cousin expected me to take it seriously. 'Are you really an enchantress,' I asked, 'that you can bring down to earth the music of the spheres, as well as make their mysteries visible?'

'Why not? is one more wonderful than the other?' she returned, with a faint smile. 'But you must not expect me to tell you all my secrets at once, Cousin Will. Think of me as an enchantress for to-night. I am not the first who has practised magic in this tower. It was built they say, in the time of King Arthur, by the magician Merlin; and Friar Bacon once lived here, and worked upon the problem of the Speaking Head. But none of them could do what I can do, or ever saw what I have seen a thousand times!'

If it had been Diana's intention—as it certainly was not—deliberately to inspire me with a sentiment of superstitious awe and expectation, by working upon an imagination always apt enough for the marvellous and recondite, she could not have chosen a more fitting time and means. The strange aspect of the lofty room, dimly illuminated below and shadowy overhead; the fantastic legends associated with it; the weird music that still trembled through it; and above all the spectacle of that potent instrument even now moving in harmony with the march of the universe;—these things alone might have stimulated the emotions of one of firmer nerves and sturdier health than mine. But, such as I then was, their influence upon me was profound and overmastering. The facts of my past life in the world, the little learning I had acquired—the material certainties, in short, whereby men are accustomed to steady themselves when assailed by aught that threatens to undermine the teachings of their experience—were become to me as nothing. Not what I had known and touched and could explain was true; but, rather, all that was inexplicable and supernatural. I was in love with mystery, and with Diana, and desired no better than to believe in them and do homage to them.

As for Diana, familiar from childhood with the scene and the proceedings, her mood was of composed and deep-seated enjoyment; and she was doubtless far from suspecting my overstrained and almost hysteric plight: nay, I myself was as yet unaware of the degree of my prostration. I watched my cousin walking hither and thither, quietly and methodically completing I knew not what further preparations for the coming revelation, until, unable longer to endure inactive suspense, I asked whether the moment for looking through the telescope were yet arrived.

'There is only one thing more to do, but that is the most important of all,' was her answer. 'Sit in this chair, and you shall see.'

She took hold of the lower end of the telescope, which was there about nine inches in diameter, removed the brass cover from it, and then, with a few light turns, unscrewed the ring that held the lens in place, and brought away the lens itself in her hands. I noticed that it was thicker through the centre than the generality of lenses, and that at one part of the rim there was a small projection, like the neck of a phial, giving the whole something of the appearance of a circular, flattened crystal flask.

She was about to set it edgewise in a velvet-covered frame evidently made for the purpose, when, glancing at me, she seemed to alter her intention.

'You may hold it if you like, Cousin Will,' she said: 'but hold it fast, for it is more precious than adamant. There is none other like it in the world.'

She put it in my hands. 'This is not a lens!' was my thought, as I felt its weight; 'it is hollow!'

'Yes,' she said, answering my look with a smile; 'it is a phial, made to hold an elixir more precious than itself. That silver vase is full of it; and now I am going to pour some into the phial. Then you will see something beautiful!'

'Is this that discovery you spoke of this afternoon?'

'Not the elixir; but the use to which we put it. The receipt for the elixir is a heritage from some of those old alchemists who used to carry on their experiments in this tower hundreds of years ago; and my father thinks it had been handed down to them from some philosopher far more ancient still. At all events he found the parchment on which the receipt was written in a concealed hollow of this wall—in that niche where the silver vase now stands. After long study, he succeeded in deciphering it; and then the elixir was made.'

'But what was it originally intended for—by the alchemists?'

'My father thinks it may have been their famous drink of Immortality,' replied Diana, taking the silver vase from its niche as she spoke. 'But he did not taste it, for he neither wished to live for ever nor to die by poison—and this may as well be an aqua toffana as an elixir vitæ! But, while brewing it, he had noticed the strange effect of moonlight upon it; and as he was there searching for some means of strengthening the telescope, it occurred to him to try an experiment. And this was the result!'

In saying these words, she slipped a funnel into the neck of the phial or lens, and, while I steadied the latter upon my knees, she poured into it about a pint of liquid from the vase. Then, taking it heedfully from my hands, she replaced it in its proper position in the neck of the telescope, secured it there by screwing on the ring, and finally, by turning a button attached to the pipe that supplied the lights, they were at once extinguished, and we were left in darkness.

Yet no—not entirely so! For, when my eyes had had time to recover from the first impression of blackness, I began to perceive that there was still light in the room, though proceeding from a different quarter. It seemed to have a deep crimson hue; and in the course of a minute or two I could see it coming through the lens of the telescope, and evidently taking its colour from the liquid with which Diana had just filled it. But whence did this light originate?

I must have asked this question aloud, for I heard Diana's voice answer:—

'It is the light of the moon. Stoop down, now, and watch the elixir change. But be careful not to look through it, until I give you leave!'

I stooped accordingly, and fixed my eyes upon the crystal. The sound of the mysterious music, rendered more weird by the darkness, did not prevent me from hearing the soft breathing of my companion, whose presence I felt close beside me, though I could not see her. She, too, was watching the changes of the magic liquid; and strange and beautiful in truth they were!

The crimson tint, at first deep and turgid, gradually cleared, until it shone like the purest ruby. A kind of fermentation, momentarily increasing, seemed to be at work within it, and I presently noticed minute currents of blue twisting about like tiny serpents, and multiplying as they moved, until the crimson grew to violet, which, in the course of a few minutes, cleared and strengthened in its turn to a brilliant and superb purple, perfectly translucent, and emitting a lustre so powerful as partly to reveal the figure of Diana, kneeling, with her hands folded upon her lap, in an attitude of thoughtful contemplation. But the fermentation was not yet complete. Again the slender serpents twined and wreathed themselves, dispelling more and more the remaining rays of crimson, and creating a uniform and ever-intensifying light of azure. It was an azure as pure as that of an Egyptian sky, but possessing a wealth and sparkle of colour such as no atmosphere can rival—the sparkle of the ideal sapphire which no lapidary has yet discovered.

'What causes this?' I whispered at length; 'and how is it to end?'

'It is the moon purging the elixir of its last earthly impurities, and making it fit to hold its image,' replied Diana, gravely. 'These changes that you see following each other so rapidly would ordinarily last for days; it is the power given to the rays by the other lenses that hastens the work. See! the blue is already becoming green: now the green brightens into yellow: and now....'

As she spoke, the fermentation gradually ceased; the liquid, having passed through all the preparatory stages, now gleamed white and pure as a diamond. The illumination which it gave forth was so intense, and yet so soft, that it permeated the whole chamber with an unearthly radiance—with the cold, colourless radiance of another world. It was as if the spirit of the moon, obeying the mandate of some irresistible spell, were present with us in that ancient tower.

'It is finished!' said Diana, with a vibration of solemnity in her tones. 'The moon is as near us now as the valley over which you saw her rise this evening. Are you ready?'

Why did I hesitate? The moment for which I had so ardently wished was come. I needed but to turn my face to behold a spectacle which no human beings save Diana and her father had yet looked upon, and which, perhaps, none other than ourselves might ever see. Was it fear that withheld me? Fear of what? Of the revelation on the brink of which I stood? or of myself?

'Are you ready?' Diana repeated.

'No!'

She gazed at me with eyes in which I dreaded to detect indignation or contempt. But no!—their glance was of grave and searching inquiry, nothing more. I forced myself to attempt an explanation of what I myself did not understand.

'I cannot trust myself, Diana. What right have I to know things which God has kept secret from other men? might it not be a kind of profanation? I am not like you—I have not lived so spotless and serene a life. You are worthy of this revelation: no one besides you is worthy of it. Even your father dares not share it with you any longer—in spite of his strength, he distrusts his strength for that. What would you think of me, if I were to look, and yet not see what you see, or feel what you feel? The risk is too great.'

It seemed to me a long while before Diana answered; and first, she sighed.

'You may be right: I have not thought of it—I do not wish to think of it,' she said. 'And perhaps all my life has been wrong—a mistake! Why should what is wrong for you be right for me?'

'There is no parallel between us, Diana.'

'I am a woman and you are a man; we were both born on the earth, to live here and to die here. Only I have lived alone in this tower, and no one has taught me what was good or bad. I tried to find the good in my own way: my father left me to myself; you are the only other man I have ever talked with. I had no companions in the world, so I tried to find one somewhere else. But perhaps it was only something within myself that I found, after all. I cannot tell: I hoped you might be able to help me, cousin.'

'You misunderstand me,' I replied, startled and agitated by the new tone in which she spoke, so different from her usual quiet and cool reserve. 'I would not presume to criticise you, Diana: you seem to me so good and noble that—that sometimes, for my own sake, I almost wish you were less so! It was of my own weaknesses and imperfections that I was thinking.'

'If all the world were no more imperfect than you, I think I should love the world,' said Diana, simply.

I felt the blood come to my face; but I feared so much to shock her by speaking too soon what was in my heart to speak, that I kept silence. Presently she said—

'You will not look, then?'

There was in her voice an accent of such wistful appeal as made my refusal seem cowardly and selfish.

'If you ask it—if you wish it—I will!'

There was a moment's pause.

'I do not wish it!' she exclaimed, standing erect and lifting her head with a gesture of decision. 'If I have done wrong, I must teach myself to feel it—will you leave me now, cousin? I need to be alone a little, I think.' I went to the door; she followed me, and held out her hand. 'Good night, Will,' she said: 'pleasant dreams! we shall see each other again in the morning.'

VII.

It is needless to say that I did not go back to the dining-room in search of my uncle. What with the turmoil of one emotion and another, I had never felt myself less capable of coherent and rational conversation. My whole body was thrilling with excitement; my brain was confused and dizzy. Once or twice I narrowly escaped missing my footing on the narrow winding stair. Having gained my room, I dropped into the chair by the window, thoroughly exhausted. The moon, I remember, though now high in the zenith, was visible from where I sat, and her rays fell upon my upturned face as I lay back, breathing heavily. Before many minutes had passed, I must have fallen asleep. How long my sleep lasted I do not know; but it was long enough for me to have a very vivid and painful dream.

It seemed to me that a tall dark figure, whose face was concealed by a veil, stood beside me and put his hand over my eyes. A dull reddish light was before me: I felt impelled to arise and move towards it. The path by which I went was narrow and uneven; it ran along the summit of a ridge which divided an apparently bottomless valley. Lurid vapours, green and yellow, rolled about far below me, or crept sluggishly up the precipitous sides of the ridge. Suddenly the red light which I followed disappeared; I was upon a rock in the midst of a black, waveless ocean. Far away towards the north a small boat flew horizonwards without sails or oars. In the boat sat the tall dark figure, and by his side was Diana. A feeling of anguish and bitter jealousy burned within me: the woman I loved was being taken away from me by a malignant creature who was neither man nor angel. Further sped the boat: yet I saw Diana turn towards me and wave her hand, as if calling me to save her. I sprang into the black water and swam after her with desperate strokes, but the current swept strong against me, and I made no headway. There was no wind, yet the waves now broke in foam around me, and the foam changed to white serpents, coiling in hissing knots. Then I knew that it was no longer a sea in which I struggled, but the infinite void of space. I moved with the constellations, in an appointed orbit, and in that orbit I must move for ever. The boat had spread a pale luminous sail that gleamed against the darkness: it swept on a course concentric with my own, but a myriad leagues away. Never should that fatal gulf be crossed, or its breadth diminished. Rounder grew the sail; it shone like burnished metal; against the disc I saw the shadowy form of the robber, and Diana in his arms. Through all eternity must I behold her thus, without the power to help or comfort her. Suddenly I passed into a great shadow, like the shadow of utter blindness. I heard a soothing melody, as of fairy choristers. A soft hand clasped mine. My dream was over. I was awake!

Awake—yes, that was certain; but where was I? No longer in my own room; I was standing in a silvery gloom, my temples still throbbing with the agony of my dream. Not yet fully master of my faculties, the idea possessed me that, in my course through space, I had fallen upon a grey cloud, which was bearing me gently onwards towards a great brightness, some glimpse of which I saw above the cloud's edge. Guided by the same soft hand, I reached the edge and sat down upon it. The brightness broke upon my eyes in a white lustre, which for a moment forced me to cover my face with my hands. Then I looked again.

Below me, and close at hand, stretched a vast plain, lit by a ghastly light. Vividly clear it was, but terrible: for there was no colour on those pinnacled mountain-summits, nor along their headlong flanks, nor in the depths of the gaping valleys. No colour, no vegetation, no life: but everywhere a frozen, voiceless, stony immobility, and a metallic lustre, as if the silent feet of innumerable centuries had worn the surface hard and smooth. It was a land of dead volcanoes, whose jagged shadows, blacker than night, lay like blots along the plain. No kindly winds blew down the awful cañons; no tender atmosphere softened their iron outlines; no clouds mercifully swathed their grim nakedness. Here seemed to lie the mighty bones of a creation which God had cursed and forgotten, upon which the sun shone only in mockery, and which was cast adrift upon the universe as an appalling warning, and symbol of the doom of sin. Amidst the happy throng of living, sentient planets, this burnt and frozen skeleton was doomed to glide eternally, seen but unseeing, fleeing for ever, but for ever held in place and pitilessly exposed by a mysterious spell. And what was this accursed world, that hung so near beneath my feet that one step, it seemed, would cast me downward upon its needle peaks? Had it a name? That which it had borne when living was buried in the oblivion of countless ages; never again, through all time to come, should tongue of man repeat its forbidden syllables: but there was another name, lawful to know and speak, which now rose intuitively to my lips and found utterance there: 'the Moon!' And at my ear a low voice that I dimly recognised seemed to confirm my divination: 'Yes,' it said, 'the Moon!' I pressed the little hand that still lay within my own, and thanked God that in this hour of unearthly vision it linked me with humanity.

I had beheld enough; but my eyes, sternly fascinated, gazed on in my own despite. In the foreground of the spectral plain an irregular chasm opened, whose perpendicular walls plunged straight down into pitch darkness. On the further verge of this chasm I saw an object which, at the first glance, I took to be a shapeless boulder, arrested there on its way from the mountain summit to the depths below. But, as my glance continued to dwell upon it, it took on form and meaning—a meaning which made my pulses torpid with dismay—which I strove to reject and disbelieve, but which revealed itself in defiance of my efforts with inevitable distinctness. Was it a carven statue? Or had that petrified figure once had life? Some day in the immeasurable past had it stood erect, moved and breathed, loved and hated? The last survivor of its race, had it witnessed the destruction of all existence, and then lain down defiant, unrepentant, and calm, and composed itself to the stony sleep from which not time itself should see the awakening? There he lay, the nameless Titan, more alone than a mortal brain dare conceive, a being who had spoken his last word, were it curse or blessing—who had done his last deed, were it good or evil—æons before the first vague dawn of life awoke upon our earth—there he lay, lifeless and soulless, yet with the power to shake my soul to-night, and even to assert a weird rivalship with me in the heart of the woman I loved! For this was the figure whose likeness I had found that evening in Diana's portfolio; it was with his ghastly fate that her girlish fancy had conceived a lofty sympathy: with him her pure thoughts had dwelt throughout her youthful years, dreaming who could tell what dreams of strange romance!—seeing in him, who was revealed to herself alone of all women, who knows what stern ideal of supernatural manhood! So had this immemorial relic of another world swayed the life and moulded the character of a mortal creature of to-day, giving to her feminine heart the companionship which it demanded, but which, in the world of men, had been thus far denied her.

And what were the features of my wondrous adversary—he with whom I must struggle for Diana's love? A shadow lay upon them; as I sought to penetrate it, methought the figure stirred! Was its repose of ages at an end, and had it roused itself to meet my human challenge? It stirred: its stiffened limbs moved with slow majesty; the vast trunk swayed and turned. But lo! the whole mountain side moved with it: the frozen crust, contracting with force irresistible, was crushed against itself, and broken; vast masses, bursting from the rocky bed, piled themselves in jagged pyramids. The lips of the great chasm trembled, and approached each other: but ere they met, I saw the form of the Titan sweep downwards to the brink, shattered and riven, but the Titan still. He paused for an instant over the abyss, then plunged headlong in, and the irrevocable lips ground together above him. Even as he plunged his face met mine, and in its stony lineaments I recognised the prototype of my own!

It was not until two or three months afterwards, as I lay recovering from the brain fever brought on by this night's adventure, that I learned how it came about. I had risen from my chair in my sleep, climbed the tower stairs, and re-entered the observatory, where Diana still remained. The touch of her hand and the sound of the music (which was produced by connecting a sort of organ with the machinery of the telescope) had partially awakened me, though not sufficiently to show me where I was. In this condition I had looked through the lens, and the vast spectacle of the moon, brought within the apparent distance of a mile or two by the magnifying power of the elixir, had burst unexpectedly upon me.

That magic lens, by the way, did not long survive the catastrophe which I witnessed by its aid. I believe Diana destroyed it that same night; I know, at all events, that she never used it again herself. She gave up the moon, much to her father's satisfaction, and, I need not say, to my own unspeakable happiness. It has been the care of my life to make her feel that better possibilities of enjoyment exist in the world than in the world's satellite. It was only a few years ago, however, that I trusted myself to tell her the story of the Titan's annihilation. We had been looking over an old portfolio of her drawings together, and a Diana of four years of age, with brown hair and hazel eyes, was assisting us in the work.

'Oh! here's papa,' she suddenly exclaimed.

Diana's mother took the drawing and examined it.

'I did this before I ever saw papa,' she said.

'Then how did you make it so like him?' demanded the small lady.

'I had a presentiment of him, my dear.'

'What's a pre-sent——?'

'My presentiment, in this case, was the man in the moon!' said Mrs. Maybold, laughing. 'Do you remember, love,' she added, handing the drawing to her husband, 'my telling you, on a certain evening, that I had made a study of a certain face, and that I would show it you some time? Well, the time has come!'

'I never was so good-looking as that,' said Mrs. Maybold's husband, with a sigh. 'However, no one will ever be able to compare your presentiment with the reality, for the former disappeared at the moment of my introduction to him.' And hereupon I told my tale. 'Do you regret him?' I asked, when it was finished.

'If you had told me this five years ago, I might have felt relieved by it,' said Mrs. Maybold, after a moment's reflection. 'As it is, the news does not affect me one way or the other.'

I shall not easily forgive my friend Mr. Edward Kemeys, the animal-sculptor, for depriving me of the right of claiming undivided credit for this story. He suggested the main idea, and some of the best details. As told by him, they seemed to me both poetic and powerful. If my version impresses the reader otherwise, it is my fault. I should regret that Mr. Kemeys had not treated the subject himself, were I not familiar with his genius as embodied in clay and bronze. If I could be the author of his 'Deer and Panther' or 'Bison and Wolves,' which had the place of honour at the Paris Salon this year, I would willingly forego the renown of a better story than I ever expect to write.

Spottiswoode & Co., Printers, New-street Square, London.

[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation left as printed.]