As it stood, the time to Donal seemed long: it was but about five minutes.

Was the man out of his mind, or only a sleep-walker?
How could he be asleep so early in the night?
As Donal stood doubting and wondering, once more came the musical cry out of the darkness--and immediately from the earl a response--a soft, low murmur, by degrees becoming audible, in the tone of one meditating aloud, but in a restrained ecstacy.

From his words he seemed still to be hearkening the sounds aerial, though to Donal at least they came no more.
"Yet once again," he murmured, "once again ere I forsake the flesh, are my ears blest with that voice! It is the song of the eternal woman! For me she sings!--Sing on, siren; my soul is a listening universe, and therein nought but thy voice!" He paused, and began afresh:-- "It is the wind in the tree of life! Its leaves rustle in words of love.

Under its shadow I shall lie, with her I loved--and killed! Ere that day come, she will have forgiven and forgotten, and all will be well! "Hark the notes! Clear as a flute! Full and stringent as a violin! They are colours! They are flowers! They are alive! I can see them as they grow, as they blow! Those are primroses! Those are pimpernels! Those high, intense, burning tones--so soft, yet so certain--what are they?
Jasmine ?--No, that flower is not a note! It is a chord!--and what a chord! I mean, what a flower! I never saw that flower before--never on this earth! It must be a flower of the paradise whence comes the music! It is! It is! Do I not remember the night when I sailed in the great ship over the ocean of the stars, and scented the airs of heaven, and saw the pearly gates gleaming across myriads of wavering miles!--saw, plain as I see them now, the flowers on the fields within! Ah, me! the dragon that guards the golden apples! See his crest--his crest and his emerald eyes! He comes floating up through the murky lake! It is Geryon!--come to bear me to the gyre below!" He turned, and with a somewhat quickened step left the room, hastily shutting the door behind him, as if to keep back the creature of his vision.
Strong-hearted and strong-brained, Donal had yet stood absorbed as if he too were out of the body, and knew nothing more of this earth.

There is something more terrible in a presence that is not a presence than in a vision of the bodiless; that is, a present ghost is not so terrible as an absent one, a present but deserted body.