This time I was too quick for them.

All the statues were in motion, statues no longer, but men and women--all shapes of beauty that ever sprang from the brain of the sculptor, mingled in the convolutions of a complicated dance.
Passing through them to the further end, I almost started from my sleep on beholding, not taking part in the dance with the others, nor seemingly endued with life like them, but standing in marble coldness and rigidity upon a black pedestal in the extreme left corner--my lady of the cave; the marble beauty who sprang from her tomb or her cradle at the call of my songs.

While I gazed in speechless astonishment and admiration, a dark shadow, descending from above like the curtain of a stage, gradually hid her entirely from my view.

I felt with a shudder that this shadow was perchance my missing demon, whom I had not seen for days.

I awoke with a stifled cry.
Of course, the next evening I began my journey through the halls (for I knew not to which my dream had carried me), in the hope of proving the dream to be a true one, by discovering my marble beauty upon her black pedestal.