Page:Fantastics and other Fancies.djvu/84

 women arose in silence; and ten thousand thousand eyes looked upon me.

I heard a voice, faint, sweet,—such a voice as we hear when dead loves visit us in dreams.

''"Thou hast kissed me: the compact is sealed forever." ''

And raising my eyes once more I saw that all the seats were graves and all the white dresses shrouds. Above me a light still shone in the blue roof, but only the light of a white moon in the eternal azure of heaven. White tombs stretched away in weird file to the verge of the horizon;—where it had seemed to me that I beheld a play, I saw only a lofty mausoleum; —and I knew that the perfume of the night was but the breath of flowers dying upon the tombs!