LYONE'S CONFESSION.
The following day I again met the goddess in the same magnificent
apartment in her palace. She was in a contemplative mood. A white robe
of the finest silk enveloped her, showing to full advantage her superb
figure. Her silky, shadowed eyes shone with a mild translucent light.
The ripe beauty of her face was somewhat pale, for some tearful memory
possessed her. Over her shoulders fell the torrent of her hair, while
on her brow gleamed a diminutive diadem whose central part was
fashioned like the throne of the gods. She wore a heavy necklace of
shrimp-pink pearls.
As we reposed on wide, luxurious couches a maiden of rare beauty
brought us dishes of curiously-prepared meats and wine of the finest
vintage in flagons of gold. From distant cloisters came wafted the
echoes of singing priestesses breathing their intoxicating Amens.
Lyone had been reciting her past soul experiences, now and then
pausing as the story would grow more sacred. To me the revelations of
the goddess were of breathless interest. I dare not urge her too
forcibly, fearing to break the spell of her confessional mood.
She was pleased to say that my advent in Egyplosis had revived the
past as no other event of late times had done. She was willing to
recall the sweet experiences of her early life, prior to her elevation
to the throne of the goddess.
I knew she was in that mood when confession to a kindred soul is most
consoling to the heart. I urged her to continue the story.
"Well," she continued, "my parents, who were people of importance in
Calnogor, had destined me for marriage and the outer world, but before
I even knew of Egyplosis I had a day dream. I saw with my waking eyes
this temple-palace as one might see it in a picture, splendid as the
reality. I saw myself with a youth of noble aspect standing in a court
of the garden, and his arm was around me. He was tall and shapely as a
palm tree and was all tenderness and devotion. The picture vanished,
yet its influence remained. It utterly transformed me from the
undreaming girl that I was to a soul active and ardent, already
experienced in what life really was. I learned that the mystery of
life was love, and longed for spiritual companionship with an inmate
of Egyplosis."
"Was the dream fulfilled as you expected it would be?" I inquired.
"Exactly as I anticipated," said Lyone. "I entered Egyplosis in spite
of the earnest desire of my people to remain in the outer world and
lead a life of barren conventionality."
"Had you not learned," I inquired, "that it was impossible to overleap
the purposes of nature without paying a penalty therefor, that ideal
passion will in time give way to the commonplace, just as water
follows the law of gravity?"
"I knew nothing but that ideal love might be eternal. It is the
passion that makes a goddess human and the mortal divine. Within a
month after entering the temple walls I discovered the very reality of
the image I had seen years before. He was my twin-soul, my lover, my
god. At our first meeting we simultaneously burst into tears. It was
an ecstasy in which the body did not participate to any marked extent,
but belonged purely to the region of the soul. We accepted the vows
made at the installation of a twin-soul and became a completed
circle."
"Being the goddess," I said, "your lover must have died?"
"He died some years ago," she said, "and on his death, by reason of my
widowhood, my gifts, my spirituality, my love and my beauty, I was
elevated to the throne of the gods when vacant, and was worshipped as
supreme goddess of the faith. It is utterly against our laws for a
goddess to choose another counterpart; she is supposed to belong only
to Harikar, the ideal soul whom also she symbolizes; hence I am
obliged to dwell largely alone."
"You doubtless regret the loss of your earthly counterpart?" I urged.
"Regret it! Ah, that was life!" she said, "for my soul then knew what
spiritual freedom means. I experienced ecstatic agonies, bliss was
pain and pain paradise. I flew as a bird full of anguish, bearing
treasures of love and tears. I desired self-sacrifice, I wanted to
smile on every one, to help every one. I loved life; I had no fear of
death. My capacity for rapture seemed to expand continually. Every
scene I gazed upon trembled in a new blaze of delight. Thoughts, like
lightning, rent open new worlds of passion and tenderness, wherein I
moved as a goddess peerless and supreme. But when the tomb closed upon
my heart of hearts I begged them to lay me by his side and seal the
door upon us forever. The glory of life had departed, and day after
day I swooned upon the sarcophagus that held my treasure, my life."
Lyone was unusually excited, and to divert her attention from the past
I spoke of the present, of her proud position as supreme goddess of
Atvatabar.
"How does it affect you," I exclaimed, "to be the recipient of such
adoration as you receive as goddess?"
"At first it was soul maddening," she replied; "I thought I should
never be able to sustain such adoration. My soul, blinded and
bewildered by the incense of song and prayer, seemed unable to bear
the intoxication. Even yet, as I sit upon the throne of the gods,
fantastic, astonishing emotions thrill me into swooning away. Oh, it
is incomparably glorious to hear around you those earthquake surges of
prayer, to see souls quivering with adoring love. I feel at times as
though I were the cone of a volcano radiating fire and flame into a
burning sky!
"Then, again, I smile, and feel as I smile that I have power over life
and death--oh, you do not know what love is--you do not know its
tremendous power until you feel its splendid flame breathed from ten
thousand souls clasping your shrieking soul in a blood-crimson
embrace! If thoughts be things it makes me a creator. If thoughts can
chisel matter, then I am gracious in face and figure. Men say my flesh
is smooth as marble, soft as velvet, and bright as gold, even as the
forms of our priests and priestesses are sculptured and colored by the
thoughts of love.
"Only a goddess knows such thoughts as hers that burn in the soul like
fluid gold. Imagination fills me at times with vast and phantasmal
splendors. Adoration glorifies me like light raining on the palms and
palaces. I see shapes of burning sweetness, and the air around me is
laden with the caresses of heavy, strange perfumes. Unclothed
raptures, exquisitely soft and tender, surround me, like heaven
opening its wings of flame upon the world. Happy voices, ringing in
the sensuous arcades of music, fall on my ears, the blown spray of
immortal friendships.
"Yet, is it not strange that all these delights, violent and glorious
as they are, do not wholly satisfy the soul? I continually long for
something sweeter yet. It seems the greater the joy the more enormous
the capacity, and no joy completely fills the ever-expanding soul."
"You think," said I, "that even the rapture of a goddess is not wholly
adequate to create a feeling of repletion of satisfaction in a soul
such as yours?"
"It is contrary to our laws to think so, yet at times I know I could
forego even the throne of the gods itself for the pure and intimate
love of a counterpart soul."
"You are not so desirous of the human soul in its collective form as
you are of individual soul wholly yours?" I ventured, shaken with a
quivering thrill.
"The soul ever seeks that which is beyond and individual," said Lyone;
"having once loved the individual soul, I know what such holy rapture
means."
"What are the difficulties to be surmounted in your quest of a
counterpart soul?" I inquired, with a secret delight.
"The sacrilege of a goddess becoming attached to the individual to the
exclusion of all other individuals. The goddess-elect must have been
a novitiate and priestess of Egyplosis and the survivor of her
counterpart soul. Her experiences as a noble and pure priestess,
together with special beauty and popularity, are the conditions for
the peerless office of supreme goddess and incarnation of Harikar. By
her vows she can never again become the exclusive possession of any
one soul. She belongs to Harikar, the universal soul."
"And what is the punishment for renunciation of your office and
attachment to another soul?"
"A shameful death by magnicity for the twin-soul. No goddess can
resign her office. No goddess can seek a lover and live."
"Not even an ideal affinity?" I asked.
"Why, even ideal affinities who forget themselves are punished with
lifelong imprisonment, and their names blotted out of the priesthood
as though they were dead," said Lyone.
"Are there many such transgressors of their vows in Egyplosis?" I
inquired.
"There are, I believe, some five hundred twin-souls at present immured
in the dungeons," said Lyone.
"Poor souls!" I murmured, "their apostasy was but their reformation."
"I often think of them," said Lyone, "but I know I can never liberate
them except by my own successful apostasy. And yet when all else is
peaceful and happy, or at least appears so, why should I become the
leader of an insurrection that would precipitate a hundred times more
misery on the nation, to say nothing of the possibility of defeat?"
I saw that a crisis had come to Lyone, a tremendous debate agitated
her soul. I forebore treading further on the sacred ground. She, with
true delicacy, was striving to hide the intensity of her proud unrest.
I felt that in time she would have the courage to take the irrevocable
step that led to freedom or death.
As I sat devouring every word spoken by Lyone I felt a strange power
surrounding me, an emanation of the soul of my beloved friend. I
resisted for a long time a sacrilegious desire to fling myself at her
feet and clasp her in my arms. I thought of her supreme dignity, her
love for her faith and her people, and I knew one cold glance from her
eyes would pierce me through and through like a sword. The more I
thought of my position at that moment the more amazed I became at
the audacity that led me to ever think of claiming the soul of the
goddess as mine, much less my encouragement of an enterprise so
desperate as we had already assuredly embarked upon.
[Illustration: HER KISS WAS A BLINDING WHIRLWIND OF FLAME AND TEARS!
IT WAS THE PROCLAMATION OF WAR UPON ATVATABAR. THENCEFORTH WE BECAME A
NEW AND FORMIDABLE TWIN-SOUL.]
As I gazed in adoration at the splendid soul before me the scene
through the open windows seemed to grow more ideal. There was a new
glory in the gardens around me, a finer flashing of fountains in the
sunlight, and a bolder chiselling of palaces and temples. Beyond and
above there wheeled the roof of the world, with its still more
prodigious forests and mountains and a wider expanse of gleaming seas.
I sprang forward with a cry of joy, falling at the feet of the
goddess. I encircled her figure with my arms and held up my face to
hers. Her kiss was a blinding whirlwind of flame and tears! Its
silence was irresistible entreaty. It dissolved all other interests
like fire melting stubborn steel. It was the proclamation of war upon
Atvatabar! It was the destruction of a unique civilization with all
its appurtenances of hopeless love. It was love defying death.
Thenceforward we became a new and formidable twin-soul!