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.