XXVI.

Allthe next day El-Râmi was alone. Féraz went out early to fulfil the appointment made with Roy Ainsworth; no visitors called,—and not even old Zaroba came near the study, where, shut up with his books and papers, her master worked assiduously hour after hour, writing as rapidly as hand and pen would allow, and satisfying his appetite solely with a few biscuits dipped in wine. Just as the shadows of evening were beginning to fall, his long solitude was disturbed by the sharp knock of a telegraph-messenger, who handed him a missive which ran briefly thus—

“Your brother stays to dine with me.—Ainsworth.”

El-Râmi crushed the paper in his hand, then, flinging it aside, stood for a moment, lost in meditation, with a sorrowful expression in his dark eyes.

“Ay me! the emptiness of the world!” he murmured at last—“I shall be left alone, I suppose, as my betters are left, according to the rule of this curiously designed and singularly unsatisfactory system of human life. What do the young care for the solitude of their elders who have tended and loved them? New thoughts, new scenes, new aspirations beckon them, and off they go like birds on the wing,—never to return to the old nest or the old ways. I despise the majority of women myself,—and yet I pity from my soul all those who are mothers,—the miserable dignity and pathos of maternity are, in my opinion, grotesquely painful. To think of the anguish the poor delicate wretches endure in bringing children at all into the world,—then, the tenderness and watchful devotion expended on their early years,—and then—why then, these same children grow up for the most part into indifferent (when not entirely callous) men and women, who make their own lives as it seems best to themselves, and almost forget to whom they owe their very existence. It is hard—bitterly hard. There ought to be some reason for such a wild waste of love and affliction. At present, however, I can see none.”

He sighed deeply, and stared moodily into the deepening shadows.

“Loneliness is horrible!” he said aloud, as though addressing some invisible auditor. “It is the chief terror of death,—for one must always die alone. No matter how many friends and relatives stand weeping round the bed, one is absolutelyaloneat the hour of death, for the stunned soul wanders blindly

“out of sight,Far off in a place where it is not heard.”

“out of sight,

Far off in a place where it is not heard.”

That solitary pause and shudder on the brink of the Unseen is fearful,—it unnerves us all to think of it. If Love could help us,—but even Love grows faint and feeble then.”

As he mused thus, a strange vague longing came over him,—an impulse arising out of he knew not what suggestion; and, acting on his thought, he went suddenly and swiftly upstairs, and straight into the chamber of Lilith. Zaroba was there, and rose from her accustomed corner silently, and moved with a somewhat feeble step into the ante-room while El-Râmi bent over the sleeping girl. Lovelier than ever she seemed that evening,—and, as he stooped above her, she stretched out her fair white arms and smiled. His heart beat quickly,—he had, for the moment, ceased to analyse his own feelings,—and he permitted himself to gaze upon her beauty and absorb it, without, as usual, taking any thought of the scientific aspect of her condition.

“Tresses twisted by fairy fingers,In which the light of the morning lingers!”

“Tresses twisted by fairy fingers,

In which the light of the morning lingers!”

he murmured, as he touched a rippling strand of the lovely hair that lay spread like a fleece of gold floss silk on the pillow near him,—“Poor Lilith!—Sweet Lilith!”

As if responsive to his words, she turned slightly towards him, and felt the air blindly with one wandering white hand. Gently he caught it and imprisoned it within his own,—then, on a strange impulse, kissed it. To his utter amazement she answered that touch as though it had been a call.

“I am here, ... my Belovëd!”

He started, and an icy thrill ran through his veins;—that word “Belovëd” was a sort of electric shock to his system, and sent a dizzying rush of blood to his brain. What did she mean,—what could she mean? The last time she had addressed him she had declared that he was not even her friend—now she called him her “beloved”—as much to his amazement as his fear. Presently, however, he considered that here perhaps was some new development of his experiment;—the soul of Lilith might possibly be in closer communion with him than he had yet imagined. But, in spite of his attempt to reason away his emotions, he was nervous, and stood by the couch silently, afraid to speak, and equally afraid to move. Lilith was silent too. A long pause ensued, in which the usually subdued tickings of the clock seemed to become painfully audible. El-Râmi’s breath came and went quickly,—he was singularly excited,—some subtle warmth from the little hand he held permeated his veins, and a sense of such utter powerlessness possessed him as he had never experienced before. What ailed him? He could not tell. Where was the iron force of his despotic will? He seemed unable to exert it,—unable even tothinkcoherently while Lilith’s hand thus rested in his. Had she grown stronger than himself? A tingling tremor ran through him, as the strange words of the monk’s written warning suddenly recurred to his memory.

“Beware the end! With Lilith’s love comes Lilith’s freedom.”

But Lilith smiled with placid sweetness, and still left her hand confidingly in his; he held that hand, so warm and soft and white, and was loath to let it go,—he studied the rapt expression of the beautiful face, the lovely curve of the sweet shut lips, the delicately-veined lids of the closed eyes,—and was dimly conscious of a sense of vague happiness curiously intermingled with terror. By and by he began to collect his ideas which had been so suddenly scattered by the one word “Belovëd,”—and he resolved to break the mystic silence that oppressed and daunted him.

“Dreaming or waking, is she?” he queried aloud, a little tremulously, and as though he were talking to himself. “She must be dreaming!”

“Dreaming of joy!” said Lilith softly, and with quick responsiveness—“only that Joy is no dream! I hear your voice,—I am conscious of your touch,—almost I see you! The cloud hangs there between us still—but God is good,—He will remove that cloud.”

El-Râmi listened, perplexed and wondering.

“Lilith,” he said in a voice that strove in vain to assume its wonted firmness and authority—“What say you of clouds,—you who are in the full radiance of a light that is quenchless? Have you not told me of a glory that out-dazzles the sun, in which you move and have your being,—then what do you know of Shadow?”

“Yours is the Shadow,” replied Lilith—“not mine! I would that I could lift it from your eyes, that you might see the wonder and the beauty. Oh, cruel Shadow, that lies between my love and me!”

“Lilith! Lilith!” exclaimed El-Râmi in strange agitation, “Why will you talk of love!”

“Do you not think of love?” said Lilith—“and must I not respond to your innermost thought?”

“Not always do you so respond, Lilith!” said El-Râmi quickly, recovering himself a little, and glad of an opportunity to bring back his mind to a more scientific level. “Often you speak of things I know not,—things that perhaps I shall never know——”

“Nay, youmustknow,” said Lilith, with soft persistence. “Every unit of life in every planet is bound to know its Cause and Final Intention. All is clear to me, and will be so to you, hereafter. You ask me of these things—I tell you,—but you do not believe me;—you will never believe me till—the end.”

“Beware the end!” The words echoed themselves so distinctly in El-Râmi’s mind that he could almost have fancied they were spoken aloud in the room. “What end?” he asked eagerly.

But to this Lilith answered nothing.

He looked at the small sensitive hand he held, and, stroking it gently, was about to lay it back on her bosom, when all at once she pressed her fingers closely over his palm, and sat upright, her delicate face expressive of the most intense emotion, notwithstanding her closed eyes.

“Write!” she said in a clear penetrating voice that sent silvery echoes through the room—“write these truths to the world you live in. Tell the people they all work for Evil, and therefore Evil shall be upon them. What they sow, even that shall they reap,—with the measure they have used, it shall be measured to them again. O wild world!—sad world!—world wherein the pride of wealth, the joy of sin, the cruelty of avarice, the curse of selfishness, outweigh all pity, all sympathy, all love! For this God’s law of Compensation makes but one return—Destruction. Wars shall prevail; plague and famine shall ravage the nations;—young children shall murder the parents who bore them; theft and rapine shall devastate the land. For your world is striving to live without God,—and a world without God is a disease that must die. Like a burnt-out star this Earth shall fall from its sphere and vanish utterly—and its sister-planets shall know it no more. For when it is born again, it will be new.”

The words came from her lips with a sort of fervid eloquence which seemed to exhaust her, for she grew paler and paler, and her head began to sink backward on the pillow. El-Râmi gently put his arm round her to support her, and, as he did so, a kind of supernatural light irradiated her features.

“Believe me, O my belovëd, believe the words of Lilith!” she murmured. “There is but one law leading to all Wisdom. Evil generates Evil, and contains within itself its own retribution. Good generates Good, and holds within itself the germ of eternal reproduction. Love begets Love, and from Love is born Immortality!”

Her voice grew fainter,—she sank entirely back on her pillow; yet once again her lips moved and the word “Immortality!” floated whisperingly like a sigh. El-Râmi drew his arm away from her, and at the same instant disengaged his hand from her clasp. She seemed bewildered at this, and for a minute or two felt in the air as though searching for some missing treasure,—then her arms fell passively on each side of her, seemingly inert and lifeless. El-Râmi bent over her half curiously, half anxiously,—his eyes dwelt on the ruby-like jewel that heaved gently up and down on her softly rounded bosom,—he watched the red play of light around it, and on the white satiny skin beneath,—and then,—all at once his sight grew dazzled and his brain began to swim. How lovely she was!—how much more than lovely! And how utterly she was his!—his, body and soul, and in his power! He was startled at the tenor of his own unbidden thoughts,—whence, in God’s name, came these new impulses, these wild desires that fired his blood? ... Furious with himself for what he deemed the weakness of his own emotions, he strove to regain the mastery over his nerves,—to settle his mind once more in its usual attitude of cold inflexibility and indifferent composure,—but all in vain. Some subtle chord in his mental composition had been touched mysteriously, he knew not how, and had set all the other chords a-quivering,—and he felt himself all suddenly to be as subdued and powerless as when his mysterious visitor, the monk from Cyprus, had summoned up (to daunt him, as he thought) the strange vision of an Angel in his room.

Again he looked at Lilith;—again he resisted the temptation that assailed him to clasp her in his arms, to shower a lover’s kisses on her lips, and thus waken her to the full bitter-sweet consciousness of earthly life,—till in the sharp extremity of his struggle, and loathing himself for his own folly, he suddenly dropped on his knees by the side of the couch and gazed with a vague wild entreaty at the tranquil loveliness that lay there so royally enshrined.

“Have mercy, Lilith!” he prayed half aloud, and scarcely conscious of his words. “If you are stronger in your weakness than I in my strength, have mercy! Repel me,—distrust me, disobey me—but do not love me! Make me not as one of the foolish for whom a woman’s smile, a woman’s touch, are more than life, and more than wisdom. O let me not waste the labour of my days on a freak of passion!—let me not lose everything I have gained by long study and research, for the mere wild joy of an hour! Lilith, Lilith! Child, woman, angel!—whatever you are, have pity upon me! I dare not love you! ... I dare not!”

So murmuring incoherently, he rose, and, walking dizzily like a man abruptly startled from deep sleep, he went straight out of the room, never looking back once, else he might have seen how divinely, how victoriously Lilith smiled!

Reachinghis study, he shut himself in and locked the door,—and, then sitting down, buried his head in his hands and fell to thinking. Such odd thoughts too!—they came unbidden, and chased one another in and out of his brain like will-o’-the-wisps in a wilderness. It was growing late, and Féraz had not yet returned,—but he heeded not the hour, or his brother’s continued absence,—he was occupied in such a mental battle with his own inward forces as made him utterly indifferent to external things. The question he chiefly asked himself was this:—Of what use was all the science he had discovered and mastered, if he was not exempt,—utterly exempt from the emotions common to the most ignorant of men? His pride had been that he was “above” human nature,—that he was able to look down upon its trivial joys and sorrows with a supreme and satiric scorn,—that he knew its ways so well as to be able to calculate its various hesitating moves in all directions, social and political, with very nearly exact accuracy. Why then was he shaken to the very centre of his being to-night, by the haunting vision of an angelic face and the echo of a sweet faint voice softly breathing the words—“My belovëd!” He could dominate others; why could he not dominate himself?

“This will never do!” he said aloud at last, starting up from his brooding attitude—“I must read—I must work,—I must, at all costs, get out of this absurd frame of mind into which I have unwittingly fallen. Besides, how often have I not assured myself that for all practical earthly considerations Lilith is dead—positively dead!”

And to reinstate himself in this idea he unlocked his desk and took from it a small parchment volume in which he had carefully chronicled the whole account of his experiment on Lilith from the beginning. One page was written in the form of a journal—the opposite leaf being reserved for “queries,” and the book bore the curious superscription “In Search of the Soul of Lilith” on its cover. The statement began at once without preamble, thus:

“August8, 18—. 9 P.M.—Lilith, an Arab girl, aged twelve, dies in my arms. Cause of death, fever and inanition. Heart ceased to beat at ten minutes past eight this evening. While the blood is still warm in the corpse I inject the ‘Electro-flamma’ under the veins, close beneath the heart. No immediate effect visible.“11 P.M.—Arab women lay out Lilith’s corpse for burial. Questioned the people as to her origin. An orphan child, of poor parentage, no education, and unquiet disposition. Not instructed in religious matters, but following the religious customs of others by instinct and imitation. Distinctive features of the girl when in health—restlessness, temper, animalism, and dislike of restraint. Troublesome to manage, and not a thinking child by any means.“August9. 5 A.M.—The caravan has just started on its way, leaving the corpse of Lilith with me. The woman Zaroba remains behind. Féraz I sent away last night in haste. I tell Zaroba part of my intention; she is superstitious and afraid of me, but willing to serve me. Lilith remains inanimate. I again use the ‘Electro-flamma,’ this time close to all the chief arteries. No sign of life.“August10. Noon.—I begin rather to despair. As a last resource I have injected carefully a few drops of ‘Flamma’ close to the brain; it is the mainspring of the whole machine, and if it can be set in motion——“Midnight.—Victory! The brain has commenced to pulsate feebly, and the heart with it. Breathing has begun, but slowly and with difficulty. A faint colour has come into the hitherto waxen face. Success is possible now.“August15.—During these last five days Lilith has breathed, and, to a certain extent, lived. She does not open her eyes, nor move a muscle of her body, and at times still appears dead. She is kept alive (if itislife) by the vital fluid, and by that only. I must give her more time.“August20.—I have called her by name, and she has answered—but how strangely! Where does she learn the things she speaks of? She sees the Earth, she tells me, like a round ball circling redly in a cloud of vapours, and she hears music everywhere, and perceives a ‘light beyond.’Where and how does she perceive anything?”

“11 P.M.—Arab women lay out Lilith’s corpse for burial. Questioned the people as to her origin. An orphan child, of poor parentage, no education, and unquiet disposition. Not instructed in religious matters, but following the religious customs of others by instinct and imitation. Distinctive features of the girl when in health—restlessness, temper, animalism, and dislike of restraint. Troublesome to manage, and not a thinking child by any means.

“August9. 5 A.M.—The caravan has just started on its way, leaving the corpse of Lilith with me. The woman Zaroba remains behind. Féraz I sent away last night in haste. I tell Zaroba part of my intention; she is superstitious and afraid of me, but willing to serve me. Lilith remains inanimate. I again use the ‘Electro-flamma,’ this time close to all the chief arteries. No sign of life.

“August10. Noon.—I begin rather to despair. As a last resource I have injected carefully a few drops of ‘Flamma’ close to the brain; it is the mainspring of the whole machine, and if it can be set in motion——

“Midnight.—Victory! The brain has commenced to pulsate feebly, and the heart with it. Breathing has begun, but slowly and with difficulty. A faint colour has come into the hitherto waxen face. Success is possible now.

“August15.—During these last five days Lilith has breathed, and, to a certain extent, lived. She does not open her eyes, nor move a muscle of her body, and at times still appears dead. She is kept alive (if itislife) by the vital fluid, and by that only. I must give her more time.

“August20.—I have called her by name, and she has answered—but how strangely! Where does she learn the things she speaks of? She sees the Earth, she tells me, like a round ball circling redly in a cloud of vapours, and she hears music everywhere, and perceives a ‘light beyond.’Where and how does she perceive anything?”

Here on the opposite side of the page was written the “query,” which in this case was headed

“Problem.”“Given, a child’s brain, not wholly developed in its intellectual capacity, with no impressions save those which are purely material, and place that brain in a state of perpetual trance,how does it come to imagine or comprehend things which science cannot prove?Is it the Soul which conveys these impressions, and, if so,whatis the Soul, andwhereis it?”

“Problem.”

“Given, a child’s brain, not wholly developed in its intellectual capacity, with no impressions save those which are purely material, and place that brain in a state of perpetual trance,how does it come to imagine or comprehend things which science cannot prove?Is it the Soul which conveys these impressions, and, if so,whatis the Soul, andwhereis it?”

El-Râmi read the passage over and over again, then, sighing impatiently, closed the book and put it by.

“Since I wrote that, what has she not said—what has she not told me!” he muttered; “and the ‘child’s brain’ is a child’s brain no longer, but a woman’s, while she has obtained absolutely no knowledge of any sort by external means. Yet she—she who was described by those who knew her in her former life as ‘not a thinking child, troublesome and difficult to manage,’ she it is who describes to me the scenery and civilisation of Mars, the inhabitants of Sirius, the wonders of a myriad of worlds; she it is who talks of the ravishing beauty of things Divine and immortal, of the glory of the heavens, of the destined fate of the world. God knows it is very strange!—and the problem I wrote out six years ago is hardly nearer solving than it was then. If I couldbelieve—but then I cannot—I must always doubt, and shall not doubt lead to discovery?”

Thus arguing with himself, and scoffing interiorly at the suggestion which just then came unbidden to his mind—“Blessed are they which have not seen and yet believed”—he turned over some more papers and sorted them, with the intention and hope of detaching his thoughts entirely from what had suddenly become the too-enthralling subject of Lilith’s beauteous personality. Presently he came upon a memorandum, over which he nodded and smiled with a sort of grim satirical content, entitled, “The Passions of the Human Animal as Nature made Him;” it was only a scrap—a hint of some idea which he had intended to make use of in literary work, but he read it over now with a good deal of curious satisfaction. It ran thus:

“Man, as a purely natural creature, fairly educated, but wholly unspiritualised, is a mental composition of: Hunger, Curiosity, Self-Esteem, Avarice, Cowardice, Lust, Cruelty, Personal Ambition; and on these vile qualities alone our ‘society’ hangs together; the virtues have no place anywhere, and do not count at all, save as conveniently pious metaphors.”

“It is true!” he said aloud—“as true as the very light of the skies! Now am I, or have I ever been, guilty of these common vices of ordinary nature? No, no; I have examined my own conscience too often and too carefully. I have been accused of personal ambition, but even that is a false accusation, for I do not seek vulgar rewards, or the noise of notoriety ringing about my name. All that I am seeking to discover is meant for the benefit of the world; that Humanity,—poor, wretched, vicious Humanity—may know positively and finally that thereisa Future. For till theydoknow it, beyond all manner of doubt, why should they strive to be better? Why should they seek to quell their animalism? Why should they need to be any better than they are? And why, above all things, should they be exhorted by their preachers and teachers to fasten their faith to a Myth, and anchor their hopes on a Dream?”

At that moment a loud and prolonged rat-tat-tatting at the street door startled him,—he hastily thrust all his loose manuscripts into a drawer, and went to answer the summons, glancing at the clock as he passed it with an air of complete bewilderment,—for it was close upon two A.M., and he could not imagine how the time had flown. He had scarcely set foot across the hall before another furious knocking began, and he stopped abruptly to listen to the imperative clatter with a curious wondering expression on his dark handsome face. When the noise ceased again, he began slowly to undo the door.

“Patience, my dear boy,” he said as he flung it open—“is a virtue, as you must have seen it set forth in copy-books. I provided you with a latch-key—where is it?—there could not be a more timely hour for its usage.”

But while he spoke, Féraz, for it was he, had sprung in swiftly like some wild animal pursued by hunters, and he now stood in the hall, nearly breathless, staring confusedly at his brother with big, feverishly-bright bewildered eyes.

“Then I have escaped!” he said in a half-whisper—“I am at home,—really at home again!”

El-Râmi looked at him steadily,—then, turning away quietly, carefully shut and bolted the door.

“Have you spent a happy day, Féraz?” he gently inquired.

“Happy!” echoed Féraz—“Happy? Yes. No! Good God!—what do you mean by happiness?”

El-Râmi looked at him again, and, making no reply to this adjuration, simply turned about and went into his study. Féraz followed.

“I know what you think,” he said in pained accents—“You think I’ve been drinking—so I have. But I’m not drunk, for all that. They gave me wine—bad burgundy—detestable champagne—the sun never shone on the grapes that made it,—and I took very little of it. It is not that which has filled me with a terror too real to deserve your scorn,—it is not that which has driven me home here to you for help and shelter——”

“It is somewhat late to be ‘driven’ home,” remarked El-Râmi with a slightly sarcastic smile—“Two in the morning, and—bad champagne or good,—you are talking, my dear Féraz, to say the least of it, rather wildly.”

“For God’s sake do not sneer at me!” cried Féraz passionately—“I shall go mad if you do! Is it as late as you say?—I never knew it. I fled from them at midnight;—I have wandered about alone under the stars since then.”

At these words, El-Râmi’s expression changed from satire to compassion. His fine eyes softened, and their lustrous light grew deeper and more tender.

“Alone—and under the stars?” he repeated softly—“Are not the two things incompatible—toyou? Have you not made the stars your companions—almost your friends?”

“No, no!” said Féraz, with a swift gesture of utter hopelessness. “Not now—not now! for all is changed. I see life as it is—hideous, foul, corruptible, cruel! and the once bright planets look pitiless; the heavens I thought so gloriously designed are but an impenetrable vault arched over an ever-filling grave. There is no light, no hope anywhere; how can there be in the face of so much sin? El-Râmi, why did you not tell me? why did you not warn me of the accursed evil of this pulsating movement men call Life? For it seemsIhave not lived, I have only dreamed!”

And with a heavy sigh, that seemed wrung from his very heart, he threw himself wearily into a chair, and buried his head between his hands in an attitude of utter dejection.

El-Râmi looked at him as he sat thus, with a certain shadow of melancholy on his own fine features, then he spoke gently:

“Who told you, Féraz, that you have not lived?” he asked.

“Zaroba did, first of all,” returned Féraz reluctantly; “and now he, the artist Ainsworth, says the same thing. It seems that to men of the world I look a fool. I know nothing; I am as ignorant as a barbarian——”

“Of what?” queried his brother. “Of wine, loose women, the race-course and the gaming-table? Yes, I grant you, you are ignorant of these, and you may thank God for your ignorance. And these wise ‘men of the world’ who are so superior to you—in what does their wisdom consist?”

Féraz sat silent, wrapt in meditation. Presently he looked up; his lashes were wet, and his lips trembled.

“I wish,” he murmured, “I wish I had never gone there,—I wish I had been content to stay with you.”

El-Râmi laughed a little, but it was to hide a very different emotion.

“My dear fellow,” he said lightly, “I am not an old woman that I should wish you to be tied to my apron-strings. Come, make a clean breast of it; if not the champagne, what is it that has so seriously disagreed with you?”

“Everything!” replied Féraz emphatically. “The whole day has been one of discord—what wonder then that I myself am out of tune! When I first started off from the house this morning, I was full of curious anticipation—I looked upon this invitation to an artist’s studio as a sort of break in what I chose to call the even monotony of my existence,—I fancied I should imbibe new ideas, and be able to understand something of the artistic world of London if I spent the day with a man truly distinguished in his profession. When I arrived at the studio, Mr. Ainsworth was already at work—he was painting—a woman.”

“Well?” said El-Râmi, seeing that Féraz paused, and stammered hesitatingly.

“She was nude,—this woman,” he went on in a low shamed voice, a hot flush creeping over his delicate boyish face,—“A creature without any modesty or self-respect. A model, Mr. Ainsworth called her,—and it seems that she took his money for showing herself thus. Her body was beautiful; like a statue flushed with life,—but she was a devil, El-Râmi!—the foulness of her spirit was reflected in her bold eyes—the coarseness of her mind found echo in her voice,—and I—I sickened at the sight of her; I had never believed in the existence of fiends,—butshewas one!”

El-Râmi was silent, and Féraz resumed—

“As I tell you, Ainsworth was painting her, and he asked me to sit beside him and watch his work. His request surprised me,—I said to him in a whisper, ‘Surely she will resent the presence of a stranger?’ He stared at me. ‘She? Whom do you mean?’ he inquired. ‘The woman there,’ I answered. He burst out laughing, called me ‘an innocent,’ and said she was perfectly accustomed to ‘pose’ before twenty men at a time, so that I need have no scruples on that score. So I sat down as he bade me, and watched in silence, and thought——”

“Ah, what did you think?” asked El-Râmi.

“I thought evil things,” answered Féraz deliberately. “And, while thinking them, I knew they were evil. And I put my own nature under a sort of analysis, and came to the conclusion that, when a man does wrong, he is perfectly aware that itiswrong, and that, therefore, doing wrong deliberately and consciously, he has no right to seek forgiveness, either through Christ or any other intermediary. He should be willing to bear the brunt of it, and his prayers should be for punishment, not for pardon.”

“A severe doctrine,” observed El-Râmi. “Strangely so, for a young man who has not ‘lived,’ but only ‘dreamed.’”

“In my dreams I see nothing evil,” said Féraz, “and I think nothing evil. All is harmonious; all works in sweet accordance with a Divine and Infinite plan, of whose ultimate perfection I am sure. I would rather dream so, than live as I have lived to-day.”

El-Râmi forbore to press him with any questions, and, after a little pause, he went on:

“When that woman—the model—went away from the studio, I was as thankful as one might be for the removal of a plague. She dropped a curtain over her bare limbs and disappeared like some vanishing evil spirit. Then Ainsworth asked me to sit to him. I obeyed willingly. He placed me in a half-sitting, half-recumbent attitude, and began to sketch. Suddenly, after about half an hour, it occurred to me that he perhaps wanted to put me in the same picture with that fiend who had gone, and I asked him the question point-blank. ‘Why, certainly!’ he said. ‘You will appear as the infatuated lover of that lady, in my great Academy work.’ Then, El-Râmi, some suppressed rage in me broke loose. I sprang up and confronted him angrily. ‘Never!’ I cried. ‘You shall never picture me thus! If you dared to do it, I would rip your canvas to shreds on the very walls of the Academy itself! I am no “model,” to sell my personality to you for gold!’ He laughed in that lazy, unmirthful way of his. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you are certainly not a model, you are a tiger—a young tiger—quite furious and untamed. I wish youwouldgo and rip up my picture on the Academy walls, as you say; it would make my fortune; I should have so many orders for duplicates. My dear fellow, if you won’t let me put you into my canvas, you are no use to me. I want your meditative face for the face of a poet destroyed by a passion for Phryne. I really think you might oblige me.’ ‘Never!’ I said; ‘the thing would be a libel and a lie. My face is not the face you want. You want a weak face, a round foolish brow, and a receding chin. Why, as God made me, and as I am, every one of my features would falsify your picture’s story! The man who voluntarily sacrifices his genius and his hopes of heaven to vulgar vice and passion must have weakness in him somewhere, and as a true artist you are bound to show that weakness in the features you portray.’ ‘And have you no weakness, you young savage?’ he asked. ‘Not that weakness!’ I said. ‘The wretched incapacity of will that brings the whole soul down to a grovelling depth of materialism—that is not in me!’ I spoke angrily, El-Râmi, perhaps violently; but I could not help myself. He stared at me curiously, and began drawing lines on his palette with his brush dipped in colour. ‘You are a very singular young fellow,’ he said at last. ‘But I must tell you that it was the fair Irene Vassilius who suggested to me that your face would be suitable for that of the poet in my picture. I wanted to please her——’ ‘You will please her more by telling her what I say,’ I interrupted him abruptly. ‘Tell her——’ ‘That you are a new Parsifal,’ he said mockingly. ‘Ah, she will never believe it! All men in her opinion are either brutes or cowards.’ Then he took up a fresh square of canvas, and added: ‘Well, I promise you I will not put you in my picture, as you have such a rooted objection to figuring in public as a slave of Phryne, though, I assure you, most young fellows would be proud of such a distinction; for one is hardly considered a “man” nowadays unless one professes to be “in love”—God save the mark!—with some female beast of the stage or the music-hall. Such is life, my boy! There! now sit still with that look of supreme scorn on your countenance, and that will do excellently.’ ‘On your word of honour, you will not place me in your picture?’ I said. ‘On my word of honour,’ he replied. So, of course, I could not doubt him. And he drew my features on his canvas quickly, and with much more than ordinary skill; and, when he had finished his sketch, he took me out to lunch with him at a noisy, crowded place, called the ‘Criterion.’ There were numbers of men and women there, eating and drinking, all of a low type, I thought, and some of them of a most vulgar and insolent bearing, more like dressed-up monkeys than human beings, I told Ainsworth; but he laughed, and said they were very fair specimens of civilised society. Then, after lunch, we went to a club, where several men were smoking and throwing cards about. They asked me to play, and I told them I knew nothing of the game. Whereupon they explained it; and I said it seemed to me to be quite an imbecile method of losing money. Then they laughed uproariously. One said I was ‘very fresh,’ whatever that might mean. Another asked Ainsworth what he had brought me there for, and Ainsworth answered: ‘To show you one of the greatest wonders of the century—a reallyyoungman in his youth,’ and then they laughed again. Later on he took me into the Park. There I saw Madame Vassilius in her carriage. She looked fair and cold, and proud and weary all at once. Her horses came to a standstill under the trees, and Ainsworth went up and spoke to her. She looked at me very earnestly as she gave me her hand, and only said one thing: ‘What a pity you are not with your brother!’ I longed to ask her why, but she seemed unwilling to converse, and soon gave the signal to her coachman to drive on—in fact, she went at once out of the Park. Then Ainsworth got angry and sullen, and said: ‘I hate intellectual women! That pretty scribbler has made so much money that she is perfectly independent of man’s help—and, being independent, she is insolent.’ I was surprised at his tone. I said I could not see where he perceived the insolence. ‘Can you not?’ he asked. ‘She studies men instead of loving them; that is where she is insolent—and—insufferable!’ He was so irritated that I did not pursue the subject, and he then pressed me to stay and dine with him. I accepted—and I am sorry I did.”

“Why?” asked El-Râmi in purposely indifferent tones. “At present, so far as you have told me, your day seems to have passed in a very harmless manner. A peep at a model, a lunch at the Criterion, a glance at a gaming-club, a stroll in the Park—what could be more ordinary? There is no tragedy in it, such as you seem inclined to imagine; it is all the merest bathos.”

Féraz looked up indignantly, his eyes sparkling.

“Is there nothing tragic in the horrible, stifling, strangling consciousness of evil surrounding one like a plague?” he demanded passionately. “To know and to feel that God is far off, instead of near; that one is shut up in a prison of one’s own making, where sweet air and pure light cannot penetrate; to be perfectly conscious that one is moving and speaking with difficulty and agitation in a thick, choking atmosphere of lies—lies—all lies! Is that not tragic? Is that all bathos?”

“My dear fellow, it is life!” said El-Râmi sedately. “It is what you wanted to see, to know, and to understand.”

“It isnotlife!” declared Féraz hotly. “The people who accept it as such are fools, and delude themselves. Life, as God gave it to us, is beautiful and noble—grandly suggestive of the Future beyond; but you will not tell me there is anything beautiful or noble or suggestive in the life led by such men and women as I saw to-day. With the exception of Madame Vassilius—and she, I am told, is considered eccentric and a ‘visionary’—I have seen no one who would be worth talking to for an hour. At Ainsworth’s dinner, for instance, there were some men who called themselves artists, and they talked, not of art, but of money; how much they could get, and how much theywouldget from certain patrons of theirs whom they called ‘full-pursed fools.’ Well, and that woman—that model I told you of—actually came to dine at Ainsworth’s table, and other coarse women like her. Surely, El-Râmi, you can imagine what their conversation was like? And as the time went on things became worse. There was no restraint, and at last I could stand it no longer. I rose up from the table, and left the room without a word. Ainsworth followed me; he was flushed with wine, and he looked foolish. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked. ‘Mamie Dillon,’ that was the name of his model, ‘wants to talk to you.’ I made him no answer. ‘Where are you going?’ he repeated angrily. ‘Home, of course,’ I replied, ‘I have stayed here too long as it is. Let me pass.’ He was excited; he had taken too much wine, I know, and he scarcely knew what he was saying. ‘Oh, I understand you!’ he exclaimed. ‘You and Irene Vassilius are of a piece—all purity, eh! all disgust at the manners and customs of the “lower animals.” Well, I tell you we are no worse than any one else in modern days. My lord the duke’s conversation differs very little from that of his groom; and the latest imported American heiress in search of a title rattles on to the full as volubly and ruthlessly as Mamie Dillon. Go home, if go you must; and take my advice, if you don’t like what you have seen in the world to-day,stayhome for good. Stay in your shell, and dream your dreams; I dare say they will profit you quite as much as our realities!’ He laughed, and as I left him I said, ‘You mistake! it is you who are “dreaming,” as you call it; dreaming a bad dream, too; it is I wholive.’ Then I went out of the house, as I tell you, and wandered alone, under the stars, and thought bitter things.”

“Why ‘bitter’?” asked El-Râmi.

“I do not know,” returned Féraz moodily, “except that all the world seemed wrong. I wondered how God could endure so much degradation on the face of one of His planets, without some grand, divine protest.”

“The protest is always there,” said El-Râmi quickly. “Silent, but eternal, in the existence of Good in the midst of Evil.”

Féraz lifted his eyes and rested their gaze on his brother with an expression of unutterable affection.

“El-Râmi, keep me with you!” he entreated; “never let me leave you again! I think I must be crazed if the world is what itseems, and my life is so entirely opposed to it; but, if so, I would rather be crazed than sane. In my wanderings to-night, on my way home hither, I met young girls and women who must have been devils in disguise, so utterly were they lost to every sense of womanhood and decency. I saw men, evil-looking and wretched, who seemed waiting but the chance to murder, or commit any other barbarous crime for gold. I saw little children, starving and in rags; old and feeble creatures, too, in the last stage of destitution, without a passer-by to wish them well; all things seemed foul and dark and hopeless, and when I entered here I felt—ah, God knows what I felt!—that you were my Providence, that this was my home, and that surely some Angel dwelt within and hallowed it with safety and pure blessing!”

A sudden remorse softened his voice, his beautiful eyes were dim with tears.

“He remembers and thinks of Lilith!” thought El-Râmi quickly, with a singular jealous tightening emotion at his heart; but aloud he said gently:

“If one day in the ‘world’ has taught you to love this simple abode of ours, my dear Féraz, more than you did before, you have had a most valuable lesson. But do not be too sure of yourself. Remember, you resented my authority, and you wished to escape from my influence. Well, now——”

“Now I voluntarily place myself under both,” said Féraz rising and standing before him with bent head. “El-Râmi, my brother and my friend, do with me as you will! If from you come my dreams, in God’s name let me dream! If from your potent will, exerted on my spirit, springs the fountain of the music which haunts my life, let me ever be a servant of that will! With you I have had happiness, health, peace, and mysterious joy, such as the world could never comprehend; away from you, though only for a day, I have been miserable. Take my complete obedience, El-Râmi, for what it is worth; you give me more than my life’s submission can ever repay.”

El-Râmi stepped up more closely to him, and, laying both hands on his shoulders, looked him seriously in the eyes.

“My dear boy, consider for a moment how you involve yourself,” he said earnestly, yet with great kindliness. “Remember the old Arabic volume you chanced upon, and what it said concerning the mystic powers of ‘influence.’ Did you quite realise it, and all that it implies?”

Féraz met his searching gaze steadily.

“Quite,” he replied. “So much and so plainly do I realise it that I even attribute everything done in the world to ‘influence.’ Each one of us is ‘influenced’ by something or some one. Even you, my dearest brother, share the common lot, though I dare say you do not quite perceive where your ruling force is generated, your own powers being so extraordinary. Ainsworth, for example, is ‘influenced’ in very opposite directions by very opposite forces—Irene Vassilius, and—his Mamie Dillon! Now I would rather haveyourspell laid upon my life than that of the speculator, the gambler, the drinker, or the vile woman, for none of these can possibly give satisfaction, at least not to me; while your wizard wand invokes nothing but beauty, harmony, and peace of conscience. So I repeat it, El-Râmi, I submit to you utterly and finally—must I entreat you to accept my submission?”

He smiled, and the old happy look that he was wont to wear began to radiate over his face, which had till then seemed worn and wearied. El-Râmi’s dark features appeared to reflect the smile, as he gently touched his brother’s clustering curls, and said playfully:

“In spite of Zaroba?”

“In spite of Zaroba,” echoed Féraz mirthfully. “Poor Zaroba! she does not seem well, or happy. I fear she has offended you?”

“No, no,” said El-Râmi meditatively, “she has not offended me; she is too old to offend me. I cannot be angry with sorrowful and helpless age. And, if she is not well, we will make her well, and if she is not happy we will make her happy, ... and be happy ourselves—shall it not be so?” His voice was very soft, and he seemed to talk at random, and to be conscious of it, for he roused himself with a slight start, and said in firmer tones: “Good-night, Féraz; good-night, dear lad. Rest, and dream!”

He smiled as Féraz impulsively caught his hand and kissed it, and after the young man had left the room he still stood, lost in a reverie, murmuring under his breath: “And be happy ourselves! Is that possible—could that be possible—inthisworld?”

Nextday towards noon, while Féraz, tired with his brief “worldly” experiences, was still sleeping. El-Râmi sought out Zaroba. She received him in the ante-room of the chamber of Lilith with more than her customary humility; her face was dark and weary, and her whole aspect one of resigned and settled melancholy. El-Râmi looked at her kindly, and with compassion.

“The sustaining of wrath is an injury to the spirit,” he wrote on the slate which served for that purpose in his usual way of communication with her; “I no longer mistrust you. Once more I say, be faithful and obedient. I ask no more. The spell of silence shall be lifted from your lips to-day.”

She read swiftly, and with apparent incredulity, and a tremor passed over her tall, gaunt frame. She looked at him wonderingly and wistfully, while he, standing before her, returned the look steadfastly, and seemed to be concentrating all his thoughts upon her with some fixed intention. After a minute or two he turned aside, and again wrote on the slate; this time the words ran thus:

“Speak; you are at liberty.”

With a deep shuddering sigh, she extended her hands appealingly.

“Master!” she exclaimed; and, before he could prevent her, she had dropped on her knees. “Forgive—forgive!” she muttered. “Terrible is thy power, O El-Râmi, ruler of spirits! terrible, mystic, and wonderful! God must have given thee thy force, and I am but the meanest of slaves to rebel against thy command. Yet out of wisdom comes not happiness, but great grief and pain; and as I live, El-Râmi, in my rebellion I but dreamed of a love that should bring thee joy! Pardon the excess of my zeal, for lo, again and yet again I swear fidelity! and may all the curses of heaven fall on me if this time I break my vow!”

She bent her head—she would have kissed the floor at his feet, but that he quickly raised her up and prevented her.

“There is nothing more to pardon,” he wrote. “Your wisdom is possibly greater than mine. I know there is nothing stronger than Love, nothing better perhaps; but Love is my foe whom I must vanquish,—lest he should vanquish me!”

And while Zaroba yet pored over these words, her black eyes dilating with amazement at the half confession of weakness implied in them, he turned away and left the room.

That afternoon a pleasant sense of peace and restfulness seemed to settle upon the little household; delicious strains of melody filled the air; Féraz, refreshed in mind and body by a sound sleep, was seated at the piano, improvising strange melodies in his own exquisitely wild and tender fashion; while El-Râmi, seated at his writing-table, indited a long letter to Dr. Kremlin at Ilfracombe, giving in full the message left for him by the mysterious monk from Cyprus respecting the “Third Ray” or signal from Mars.

“Do not weary yourself too much with watching this phenomenon,” he wrote to his friend. “From all accounts, it will be a difficult matter to track so rapid a flash on the Disc as the one indicated, and I have fears for your safety. I cannot give any satisfactory cause for my premonition of danger to you in the attempt, because, if we do not admit an end to anything, then there can be no danger even in death itself, which we are accustomed to look upon as an ‘end,’ when it may beprovedto be only a beginning. But, putting aside the idea of ‘danger’ or ‘death,’ the premonition remains in my mind as one of ‘change’ for you; and perhaps you are not ready or willing even to accept a different sphere of action from your present one, therefore I would say, take heed to yourself when you follow the track of the ‘Third Ray.’”

Here his pen stopped abruptly; Féraz was singing in a soft mezza-voce, and he listened:

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