51. CHAPTER LI.
THE DREAM BEGINS TO FADE.
Stripped of the strange associations, with which a mind
like Yillah's must have invested every incident of her life,
the story of her abode in Ardair seemed not incredible.
But so etherealized had she become from the wild conceits
she nourished, that she verily believed herself a being of the
lands of dreams. Her fabulous past was her present.
Yet as our intimacy grew closer and closer, these fancies
seemed to be losing their hold. And often she questioned
me concerning my own reminiscences of her shadowy isle.
And cautiously I sought to produce the impression, that
whatever I had said of that clime, had been revealed to me
in dreams; but that in these dreams, her own lineaments
had smiled upon me; and hence the impulse which had
sent me roving after the substance of this spiritual image.
And true it was to say so; and right it was to swear it,
upon her white arms crossed. For oh, Yillah; were you
not the earthly semblance of that sweet vision, that haunted
my earliest thoughts?
At first she had wildly believed, that the nameless affinities
between us, were owing to our having in times gone by
dwelt together in the same ethereal region. But thoughts
like these were fast dying out. Yet not without many
strange scrutinies. More intently than ever she gazed into
my eyes; rested her ear against my heart, and listened to its
beatings. And love, which in the eye of its object ever seeks
to invest itself with some rare superiority, love, sometimes
induced me to prop my failing divinity; though it was I
myself who had undermined it.
But if it was with many regrets, that in the sight of Yillah,
I perceived myself thus dwarfing down to a mortal; it
was with quite contrary emotions, that I contemplated the
extinguishment in her heart of the notion of her own spirituality.
For as such thoughts were chased away, she clung
the more closely to me, as unto one without whom she would
be desolate indeed.
And now, at intervals, she was sad, and often gazed long
and fixedly into the sea. Nor would she say why it was,
that she did so; until at length she yielded; and replied,
that whatever false things Aleema might have instilled into
her mind; of this much she was certain: that the whirlpool
on the coast of Tedaidee prefigured her fate; that in
the waters she saw lustrous eyes, and beckoning phantoms,
and strange shapes smoothing her a couch among the mosses.
Her dreams seemed mine. Many visions I had of the
green corse of the priest, outstretching its arms in the water,
to receive pale Yillah, as she sunk in the sea.
But these forebodings departed, no happiness in the universe
like ours. We lived and we loved; life and love were
united; in gladness glided our days.
