Learn, Leo Vincey, that from my childhood onwards you have haunted me.

Oh! when first I saw you yonder by the river, your face was not strange to me, for I knew it--I knew it well in dreams.
When I was a little maid and slept one day amidst the flowers by the river's brim, it came first to me--ask my uncle here if this be not so, though it is true that your face was younger then.

Afterwards again and again I saw it in my sleep and learned to know that you were mine, for the magic of my heart taught me this.
"Then passed the long years while I felt that you were drawing near to me, slowly, very slowly, but ever drawing nearer, wending onward and outward through the peoples of the world; across the hills, across the plains, across the sands, across the snows, on to my side.

At length came the end, for one night not three moons ago, whilst this wise man, my uncle, and I sat together here studying the lore that he has taught me and striving to wring its secrets from the past, a vision came to me.
"Look you, I was lost in a charmed sleep which looses the spirit from the body and gives it strength to stray afar and to see those things that have been and that are yet to be.

Then I saw you and your companion clinging to a point of broken ice, over the river of the gulf.