I fancied I caught sight of reddish lines, but when I would have examined them, they were gone.
All at once, a radiant form stood in the centre of the darkness, flashing a splendour on every side.

Over a robe of soft white, her hair streamed in a cataract, black as the marble on which it fell.

Her eyes were a luminous blackness; her arms and feet like warm ivory.

She greeted me with the innocent smile of a girl--and in face, figure, and motion seemed but now to have stepped over the threshold of womanhood.
"Alas," thought I, "ill did I reckon my danger! Can this be the woman I rescued--she who struck me, scorned me, left me ?" I stood gazing at her out of the darkness; she stood gazing into it, as if searching for me.
She disappeared.

"She will not acknowledge me!" I thought.