nor yet lightly. He had as much right
to his genealogy as she to hers.

But what a strange effect his words wrought on her! She clasped her
hands together quickly in a kind of ecstasy.

"The sun,--Balder! I have prayed to him,--he as come to me,--Balder,
my God!" With how divine an accent did her full low voice give him the
name to which he had dared aspire! He was God--and her God!

He perhaps divined one part of the process through which her mind must
have gone; but he could not find a word to answer, whether of
acceptance or disclaimer. He turned pale,--his heart sick. Had the
recognition of his Godhood been too tardy? Gnulemah fancied he
repulsed her, and her passion kindled,--only religious passion, but it
seared him!

"Do not be cold to me, Balder!"--his name as she uttered it moved him
as a blasphemy. "In my lonely kneelings I have felt you! my eyes
close, my hands grow together, my breath flutters, every breath is joy
and fear! I think 'He is with me,--the Being I adore!' but when I
opened my eyes, He was gone,--Balder!"

Still motionless and seeming-deaf stood the Divinity, bathed in
mocking sunlight. He was powerless to stop her from unveiling to him,
as to a visible God the sacred places of her maiden heart. That
sublime office whose reversion he had boldly courted, in the
possession shrivelled his soul to nothing and left him dead. It was
not easy to be God,--even over one human being!

But Gnulemah, in her mighty earnestness, knelt nearer, so that the
edge of Balder's sunlight smote the golden ornaments that clung round
her outstretched arms. She almost touched him, but though his spirit
recoiled, the doltish flesh would not be moved.

"It was not to be always so," she continued, an appealing vehemence
quivering through her tones. "Some day I was to see Him and know Him
more clearly. Shine on me, Balder! am not I your priestess? in the
morning do not I worship you, and at noon, and in the evening? At
night do not I kneel at your altar and pray you to care for me while I
sleep? Hear me, Balder! I see you in all things,--they are your
thoughts and meet again in you! The sun himself is but your shadow! Do
not I know you, my Balder? Be not clouded from your servant! Leave me
not,--take me with you where you go!"

It was at this moment that the young man's mind, stumbling stupidly
hither and thither, chanced to encounter that picture of the
courtesan, leaning from the open window in the city street, b