"But not so was my hope to be fulfilled. One starlight night I was looking, hoping, when a sudden breeze came up. It touched me, I thought, as if it were a cold, white beam from those stranger worlds. The cold gained upon my heart; every blossom trembled, every leaf grew brittle, and the fruit began to seem unconnected with the stem; soon I lost all feeling; and morning found the pride of the garden black, stiff, and powerless.
"As the rays of the morning sun touched me, consciousness returned, and I strove to speak, but in vain. Sealed were my fountains, and all my heartbeats still. I felt that I had been that beauteous tree, but now only was--what--I knew not; yet I was, and the voices of men said, It is dead; cast it forth, and plant another in the costly vase. A mystic shudder of pale joy then separated me wholly from my former abode.
"A moment more, and I was before the queen and guardian of the flowers. Of this being I cannot speak to thee in any language now possible betwixt us; for this is a being of another order from thee, an order whose presence thou mayst feel, nay, approach step by step, but which cannot be known till thou art of it, nor seen nor spoken of till thou hast passed through it.
"Suffice it to say, that it is not such a being as men love to paint; a fairy, like them, only lesser and more exquisite than they; a goddess, larger and of statelier proportion; an angel, like still, only with an added power. Man never creates; he only recombines the lines and colors of his own existence: only a deific fancy could evolve from the elements the form that took me home.
"Secret, radiant, profound ever, and never to be known, was she; many forms indicate, and none declare her. Like all such beings, she was feminine. All the secret powers are "mothers." There is but one paternal power.
"She had heard my wish while I looked at the stars, and in the silence of fate prepared its fulfilment. 'Child of my most communicative hour,' said she, 'the full pause must not follow such a burst of melody. Obey the gradations of nature, nor seek to retire at once into her utmost purity of silence. The vehemence of thy desire at once promises and forbids its gratification. Thou wert the keystone of the arch, and bound together the circling year: thou canst not at once become the base of the arch, the centre of the circle. Take a step inward, forget a voice, lose a power; no longer a bounteous sovereign, become a vestal priestess, and bide thy time in the magnolia.'