The whole thing stood out with stereoscopic clearness, and seemed as though self-luminous, although it shed no light on its surroundings.

At that moment the youth turned his head, and met Austin's eyes with an expression that was not a smile, but something far more subtle, something that bore the same relation to a smile that a smile does to a laugh--thrilling, penetrating, indescribable.

Austin flung out his hands in rapture.
"Daphnis!" he ejaculated, with a flash of intuition.
He threw himself forward impulsively, in a mad attempt to approach the wonderful phantasm.

As he did so, the colours lost their sheen, and the figure faded into transparency.

By the time he was near enough to touch it, it was no longer there, and the next instant he found himself clinging to the cold stone margin of the old fountain, all alone upon the lawn in the fast gathering twilight, shivering, panting, marvelling, but exultant in the consciousness of having been vouchsafed just one glimpse of the being who, so long unseen, had constituted for many years his cherished ideal of physical and spiritual beauty.
He leant upon the fountain, in the spot that the vision had occupied.
"And I believe he's always been here--all these many years," mused the boy, coming gradually to himself again.