As I cried out, I turned slightly and, for a moment, lost the picture. It was changed when again I saw it; Randolph Chance was still there, but he no longer advanced toward the vision wife--she had faded into mist; he came slowly toward me. There was a beautiful look on his face--I cannot describe it--it was too holy to translate into language; but I could feel it vibrate through my being until it set my very soul a-quivering. I had no power of resistance--no wish to resist. I almost think I went toward him, and he was as real to me as if he were in the flesh. I could feel him as he put his arm around my waist, and his face touched mine. The vision child had melted away; and we two were alone; I knew my heart then; I knew I loved this man.

It was all over in a few moments, but such moments as make an eternity, for they wipe out the past, even as death blots out a life, and they open a door to the future. Up to that time I had never thought that, without my knowledge or intent, my heart could slip from me--had never dreamed that I, whose life had always been most commonplace--I, who had had my share of wooing, but had never felt an extra heart-beat because of it--no, never dreamed that I, this I, so practical and sensible, could be carried off my feet by a vision. A vision, was it? Yes, and yet real, too real in some ways, since it revealed my innermost thought. A vision! And yet, even now that it had melted into air, I was clinging to it, and instead of resenting its startling revelation of self, was dwelling upon it, and in it, with a delight beyond words.