r, my science,
and loved by one into whose sphere death comes not, even thus must
I perish! True, the rich spices, the perfumed woods, the fragrant oils,
which would feed the sacred fire of my funeral pyre, would save my
mortal remains from that corruption which makes the disgust of death
even worse than its dread. A few odoriferous ashes alone would be
left for my urn. Yet not the less must I share the common doom of my
race--I must die!

"Nay, my beautiful!" said the voice, which was to me as the fiat of
life and of death, so utterly did it fill my existence: "why should
we thus yield to a vague terror? Listen, my beloved! I know where the
waters of the fountains of life roll their eternal waves--I know I can
bear you thither and bid you drink from their source, and over lips so
hallowed death hath no longer dominion. But, alas! I know not what may
be the punishment. Like yourselves, the knowledge of our race goes on
increasing, and our experience, like your own, hath its agonies. None
have dared what I am about to dare, and the future of my deed is even
to me a secret. But what may not be borne for that draught which makes
my loved one as immortal as my love!"

I gazed on the glorious hope which lighted up his radiant brow, and
I said to him, "Give me an immortality which must be thine." Worlds
rolling on worlds lay beneath our feet when we stood beside the waters
of life. A joyful pride swelled in my heart. I, the last and the weakest
of my race, had won that prize which its heroes and its sages had found
too mighty for their grasp. A sound, as of a storm rushing over ocean,
startled me when I stooped to drink, the troubled waves rose into
tumultuous eddies, their fiery billows parted, and from amid them
appeared the dark and terrible Spirit of Necessity. The cloud of his
awful face grew deeper as it turned on me. "Child of a sinful and a
fallen kind!" said he, and he spoke the language most familiar to my
ear, which yet sounded like that of another world, "who have ever
measured by their own small wisdom that which is infinite--drink, and be
immortal! Be immortal, without the wisdom or the power belonging unto
immortality. Drink!"

I shrunk from the starry waters as they rose to my lip, but a power
stronger than my will compelled me to their taste. The draught ran
through my veins like ice. Slowly I turned to where my once-worshipped
lover was leaning. The same change had passed over both. Our eyes met,
and eac