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Updated: May 21, 2025
Nevertheless, and apart from any question of personal danger, Balder felt ill at ease, like animals before a thunder-storm. As he sat down beside his companion on the steps of the black altar, and glanced up at the yellow visage that presided over it, he tried to quiet his mind in vain; even the thought of Gnulemah yielded a vague anxiety!
It was only a flower chain, but flowers are the bloom and luxury of life. Manetho came up with a smile. "Come, my children!" said he. "This chain would soon have faded and fallen apart of itself, but the chain I will forge you is stronger than time and weightier than dandelions. Come!" Gnulemah picked up the broken links, and they followed him to the house.
You are as a man nourished on poison, who suddenly tastes an antidote, and finds it fatal! You halt towards the door and put forth a hand to open it. You will save Gnulemah; her innocence will save her from the knowledge of her loss. As for Balder, his suffering will satisfy a reasonable enemy. No wife, no fortune, the cup dashed from his lips just as the aroma was ravishing his nostrils!
Gnulemah objected, "It loves the air better than the earth!" "When man begins to fall, he becomes mad, and thinks he is not falling, but that earth is heaven, to which he is rising. But since earth is not like heaven, infinite, he does not wish others to enjoy it, lest his own pleasure be marred." "How can that be?" said the unwilling Gnulemah. "What can make men so happy on earth as other men?"
"You never told me who lived beyond the wall," returned Gnulemah, with simple dignity; and added, "You are no less to me than before, but Balder is my love!" The last words came shyly from her lips, and she swayed gently, like a noble tree, towards him she named. Manetho's lips worked against each other, and his body twitched.
He got up and walked to the brink. Full sixty feet to the bottom. Gnulemah also rose slowly, and stretched herself like a tired child, sending a lazy tension through every noble limb and polished muscle. She sighed with a deep breathing in and out, and pressed her hands against her temples. "I was not made to understand such things. Tell me of what you have done or seen I shall understand that.
"I have come to look on her as though she were myself, and she tells me secrets which no one else can know. Some things she tells me that I do not care to hear, but they are always true. I can see changes in; her face that I feel in my own heart." "Does she teach you that you grow every day more beautiful?" He was willing to prove whether Gnulemah could thus be disconcerted.
Shivering and desperate, not yet daring for his life to understand, he came and stood before her, almost within reach of those groping hands. "I am here, look at me, Gnulemah! I am here your husband!" There was a pause. The storm, having spent itself in that last burst, was rolling heavily away. There was silence in the nuptial chamber, infringed only by the breathing of the newly married lovers.
But Balder had perceived a startling significance in Manetho's words. He took Gnulemah by the hand and led her to the eastern window. A flash greeted them, creating a momentary world, which started from the womb of night, and vanished again before one could say "It is there!"
He had nearly forgotten the frescos; the victorious sunshine had reduced the figures, satanic or beautiful, to a meaningless agglomeration of wandering lines and faded colors. As for his own portrait, it was no longer distinguishable. Balder easily found his way to the conservatory, but it was empty, Gnulemah, at least, was not there!
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