Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/97

 The soul of the poet had by a superhuman access of will managed to break its bonds and escape elsewhere. "But whither? Into what vast realms of translucent light or drear shadow?" Unable to answer the question, the monk betakes himself to the monastery chapel, and prays in silence till the heavy night had passed and the storm "had slain itself with the sword of its own fury on the dark slopes of the Pass of Dariel."

Theos for a time lies as one dead. Anon he awakes, seats himself at a table, and writes. Sometimes he murmurs "Ardath," but he goes on writing for hours. Then Heliobas rejoins him. "I have been dreaming," Theos says. The monk points to the written manuscript as proof that the dream has been productive, at any rate. Alwyn reads from the manuscript and recites:

"With thundering notes of song sublime I cast my sins away from me, On stairs of sound I mount—I climb!  The angels wait and pray for me!"

But that, he remembers, is a stanza he had heard somewhere when he was a boy. Why does he now think of it? "She has waited,—so she said,—these many thousand days!" And there was the key to the dream. There was a woman in it; and an angel.