ake the death of our loved ones final,
irreparable, horrible, therefore I foretell thee this: Women will never
believe them! What is there that is changed?--Yesterday, children came
playing close to us. You know how their cries and laughter made me
glad--the voice of one of them was like the voice of mine. I made him
come, I put out my hand, in the old way. I felt, at the old height,
tossed hair, and the warmth of a living body. And I did not weep, but my
voice spoke in my heart and said: "Little child, thy years are as many
as his, whom she-who-loves-the-silence took from me. But in Amenti,
where he is, in the island of souls, he is happier than thou, for he is
safe from all the ills that threaten thee. He is happier than thou. He
lives beneath a sun of gold, amid flowers of strange beauty, and
perfumed baths refresh him. And when she-who-loves-the-silence takes me
in my turn, _I shall see him, I shall see him_ for the first time--and
I shall fondle him as I fondle thee, and none, then, may put us asunder.
Go, little child, the happy ones are not on this side of the earth!" Now
have I lost the hope of a better life before death, and the hope of a
better life beyond as well. If you took both crutches from a cripple, he
would fall. Only this twofold hope sustained me. They have taken it from
me. And so, it is the end, it is the end--'tis as though I were fallen
from a height, I am broken, I have no strength left to bear with life: I
tell you, it is the end, it is the end!

YAOUMA [_with intense fervor_] Mistress, they speak not the truth!

MIERIS. Our gods, did they exist, would already have taken vengeance.

YAOUMA. Before the outrage, already, they had taken vengeance on you.

MIERIS. Good Yaouma, you would give me back my faith, you who could not
keep your own.

YAOUMA. Mistress, I lied to you; nothing is destroyed in me.

MIERIS. You refuse to give yourself in sacrifice!--Oh, you are right....

YAOUMA. I do not refuse.

MIERIS. You do not?

YAOUMA. No. Know you how I learned, a while ago, that you were gone?

MIERIS. How?

YAOUMA. I, too, was seeking to escape.

MIERIS. You?

YAOUMA. To go to the temple, to place myself in hands of the priests, to
give to Ammon the victim he has chosen.

MIERIS. Do you believe in all these fables still?

YAOUMA [_in a low voice_] Mistress, I have _seen_ Isis.

MIERIS. Has one of her images been spared then?

YAOUMA. It was not an image that I saw. It was Isis hers