elf, the
goddess--I have _seen_ her.

MIERIS. You--you have seen--what is it? I know not what you say--to
see--that word has no clear sense for me.

YAOUMA. She has spoken to me--

MIERIS. You have heard her voice--

YAOUMA. I have heard her voice.

MIERIS. How! How!--You were sleeping--'twas in a dream--

YAOUMA. I did not sleep. I did not dream. I saw her. I heard her. I was
alone, and I wept. A great sound filled me with terror. A great light
blinded me. Perfumes unknown ravished my senses. And I beheld the
goddess, more beauteous than a queen. Then all was gone--

MIERIS. But her voice--

YAOUMA. The next day she came again, she spoke to me, she called me by
name and said to me: "Egypt will be saved by thee."

MIERIS. Why did you not speak of it?

YAOUMA. I feared they would not believe me.

MIERIS. Oh, Yaouma, how I envy you! If you but knew the ill they have
done me. They have half killed me, killing all the legends and all the
memories that were mine. They made me blush at my simplicity. I felt
shamed to have been so easily fooled by such gross make-believes. And
now, what have I gained by this revelation? My soul is a house after the
burning, black, ruined, empty. Nothing is left but ruins, ruins one
might laugh at. [_In tears_] I am parched with thirst, I hunger, I
tremble with cold. They have made my soul blind, too. I cry out for
help, for consolation. Oh! for a lie, some other lie, to replace the one
they have taken away from me!

YAOUMA. Why ask a lie? Why not forget what they have said. Why not
recall what you learned at your mother's knee--Why not, yourself, set up
in your heart again, those images which they threw down--

MIERIS. Yes! Yes! I will do it. They have awakened my reason, and killed
my faith. I shall kill my reason, to revive our gods. Though I no longer
believe, I shall do the actions of believers--and, if my god be false, I
shall believe so firmly in him that I shall make him true!--Yes, the
lowest, the most senseless superstitions, I venerate them, I exalt--I
glory in them! The ugliest, the most deformed, the most unreal of our
gods, I adore them, and I bow down before their impossibility. [_She
kneels_] Oh, I stifle in their petty narrow world, sad as a forest
without birds! Air! Air! Singing! The sound of wings! Things that fly!

YAOUMA [_kneeling_] Let me be sacrificed!

MIERIS. Let me have a reason for living!

YAOUMA. I would give my life to the gods who gave me bir