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Updated: May 3, 2025
And, as he looked, a host of spectral faces seemed to rise whitely out of the flames and wonder at him! ... faces that were solemn, wistful, warning, and beseeching by turns! ... they drifted through the fire and smiled, and wept, and vanished, to reappear again and yet again! ... and as, with painfully beating heart, he strove to combat the terror that seized him at this strange spectacular delusion, all suddenly the heavy wreaths of smoke that had till now hung over the Inner Shrine of Nagaya parted like drapery drawn aside from a picture.. and for a brief breathing space of direst agony he saw Lysia once more, Lysia, in a torture as horrible as any ever depicted in a bigot's idea of his enemy's Hell!
"Even thus do I love Lysia!" continued Sah-luma "She perplexes me, . . she opposes her will to mine, ... the very irritation and ferment into which I am thrown by her presence adds fire to my genius, . . and but for the spur of this never-satiated passion, who knows whether I should sing so well!"
But Lysia was perfectly self-possessed, . . in fact she appeared to accept the threat of a storm as an imposing, and by no means undesirable, adjunct to the mysteries of the Sacrificial Rite, for riveting her basilisk eyes on Niphrata, she said in firm, clear, decisive accents: "The gods grow impatient! ... Wherefore, O Princess and People of Al-Kyris, let us hasten to appease their anger!
"Fear thee!" and stung to a sudden heat Theos made one bound to her side and seizing her slim wrists, held them in a vise-like grip "So little do I fear thee, Lysia, so well do I know thee, that in my very caresses I would slay thee, couldst thou thus be slain!
"Ah, Lysia, hast thou played me false?".. cried the unhappy Laureate at last, as with a quick, impulsive movement, he caught her round jewelled arm in a resolute grip.. "After all thy vows, thy endearments, thy embraces, hast thou betrayed me? Speak truly! ... Art thou not all in all to me? ... hast thou not given thyself body and soul into my keeping?
Some extraordinary power in it, or in Lysia herself, was manifestly at work, for with a violent start Sah-luma rose from his knees, and staggered helplessly backward, . . one hand pressed to his eyes as though to shut out some blinding blaze of lightning!
Arrived at the foot of the huge erection that towered above him like a steep cliff of molten gems, he fancied he heard a faint sound behind it as of clinking glasses and boisterous laughter, but before he had time to consider what this might mean, Lysia laid her hand lightly on a small, protruding knob of crystal, pressed it, and lo! ... the whole massive structure yawned open suddenly without any noise, suspending itself as it were in sparkling festoons of purple stalactites over the voluptuously magnificent scene disclosed.
Lysia! what, Lysia! ... dost thou frown at me? Frown not, sweet queen, but rather laugh! ... thy laughter kills, 'tis true, but thy frown doth torture spirits after death! Unbend thy brows! Night looms between them like a chaos! ... we will have no more night, I say, but only noon! ... a long, languorous, lovely noon, flower-girdled and sunbeam-clad!
An undertone of mockery rang through the languid silvery sweetness of his accents, and the Priest's dark brows knitted in an irritated frown. "Thou art over-flippant of speech, Sah-luma!" he observed austerely. "Take heed thou be not snared into misfortune by the glibness of thy tongue! Thou dost speak of the chaste Lysia with unseemly lightness. learn to be reverent, and so shalt thou be wiser!"
One young man whose flushed face had all the joyous, wanton, effeminate beauty of a pictured Dionysius, reeled forward, goblet in hand, and tossing the wine in air so that it splashed down again at his feet, staining his white garments as it fell with a stain as of blood, he cried, tipsily: "All hail, Lysia! Where hast thou wandered so long, thou Goddess of Morn?
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