Chapter XIV: The Wedding-Gift (2)

'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.]