As they moved in majestic order, he heard a low sound--the ghost, as it were, of voice--which each caught and echoed from the other; a low sound, but musical, which seemed the chant of some unspeakably tranquil joy.

None of these apparitions heeded him.

His intense longing to accost them, to be of them, to make one of this movement of aerial happiness,--for such it seemed to him,--made him stretch forth his arms and seek to cry aloud, but only an inarticulate whisper passed his lips; and the movement and the music went on the same as if the mortal were not there.

Slowly they glided round and aloft, till, in the same majestic order, one after one, they floated through the casement and were lost in the moonlight; then, as his eyes followed them, the casement became darkened with some object undistinguishable at the first gaze, but which sufficed mysteriously to change into ineffable horror the delight he had before experienced.

By degrees this object shaped itself to his sight.