Her blood coursed rapidly, and with a sensation of delight, through her veins,--she felt as if chains were falling from her limbs, as if cloud after cloud was rolling from her gaze.

All the confused thoughts which had moved through her trance settled and centred themselves in one intense desire to see the Absent One,--to be with him.
The monads that make up space and air seemed charged with a spiritual attraction,--to become a medium through which her spirit could pass from its clay, and confer with the spirit to which the unutterable desire compelled it.

A faintness seized her; she tottered to the seat on which the vessels and herbs were placed, and, as she bent down, she saw in one of the vessels a small vase of crystal.

By a mechanical and involuntary impulse, her hand seized the vase; she opened it, and the volatile essence it contained sparkled up, and spread through the room a powerful and delicious fragrance.

She inhaled the odour, she laved her temples with the liquid, and suddenly her life seemed to spring up from the previous faintness,--to spring, to soar, to float, to dilate upon the wings of a bird.