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For one moment Theos remained stupefied by the sheer horror of the catastrophe, then, recalling his bewildered wits to his aid, he peered anxiously through the archway where he rested, . . there seemed to be a dim red glow at the end of the downward-leading steps, as well as a dusky azure tint, like a patch of midnight sky.
"By my soul!" he muttered, "how this thought of death haunts me like the unburied corpse of a slain foe! I would there were no such thing as Death; 'tis a cruel and wanton sport of the gods to give us life at all if life must end so utterly and so soon!" He sighed deeply. Theos echoed the sigh, but answered nothing.
Come, place thyself at ease upon this cushioned couch, and give me thy attention, ... I feel the fervor rising within me, ... I will summon Zabastes, ... " Here he pulled a small silken cord which at once set a clanging bell echoing loudly through the palace, ... "And thou shalt freely hear, and freely judge, the last offspring of my fertile genius, my lyrical romance 'Nourhalma!" Theos started violently, ... he had the greatest difficulty to restrain the anguished cry that arose to his lips.
The impassive, cold-blooded calmness with which all the men present, even Sah-luma, looked on at the revolting spectacle of their late comrade's torture, filled Theos with shuddering abhorrence, ... sick at heart, he strove to turn away his eyes from the straining throat and upturned face of the miserable Nir- jalis, a face that had a moment or two before been beautiful, but was now so disfigured as to be almost beyond recognition.
"Good heavens, man!" cried Theos, in amazement, "But a moment since, you were praising the excellence of Reason, and the progressive system of learning that was to educate human beings into a contempt for the Supernatural and Spiritual, and yet almost in the same breath you tell me you cannot rely on the evidence of your own senses! Was there ever anything more utterly incoherent and irrational!"
Sah-luma, irritated at the sudden interruption that had thus distracted the general attention from his own fair and flattered self, gave an expressively petulant glance toward Theos, who smiled back at him soothingly as one who seeks to coax a spoilt child out of its ill-humor, and then all eyes were turned expectantly toward the entrance of the audience- chamber.
Sophrosynê in religion was the message of the classical age. But the ages before and after had no belief in such a lesson. The old Medicine-Man was perhaps himself the first Theos. But the effort was too great for the average world; and in a later age nearly all the kings and rulers all people in fact who can command an adequate number of flatterers become divine beings again.
It flashed through the air like a bright spark of flame and fell, glistening redly, on the pavement just half-way between Theos and Sah-luma...Theos eyed it with faintly amused indifference, . . the Laureate bowed gracefully, but did not stoop to raise it, he left that task to his harp-bearer, who, taking it up, presented it to his master humbly on one knee.
Warmed by enthusiasm, with his eyes flashing and the impetuous words coursing from his lips, his head thrown back, his hand uplifted, Sah-luma looked magnificent, and Theos, to whose misty brain the names of Oruzel and Hyspiros carried no positively distinct meaning, was nevertheless struck by a certain suggestiveness in his remarks that seemed to bear on some discussion in the literary world that had taken place quite recently.
Starting back with a cry of terror, he gazed wildly on this miracle, a voice richer than all music rang silvery clear across the liquid radiance. "Fame!" said the voice ... "Wouldst thou crown Me, Theos, with so perishable a diadem?" Paralyzed and speechless, he lifted his straining, dazzled eyes was THAT Edris? that lustrous figure, delicate as a sea-mist with the sun shining through?
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