s sweet as honey, the blue of larkspurs, the fragrance of musk
flowers, and the swaying cups of scarlet poppies.

Then the ship rose again toward the mammoth rocks that shimmered in
the sunlight adorned with the tapestries of falling wave. Still upward
we rose into the spell-bound sky, feeding on the savage sweets of
nature, the rhythm of the golden cliffs, the echoes of the waterfalls.
We were the associates of mighty pines that on the Theban peaks spread
incomparable solaces for mind and heart. Then, as we descended from
our extreme altitude, we began also to revolve with a splendid sweep
of motion, until the landscape swam around us like a dream.

It was a delirious phantasy of airy clouds, fluttering leaves, songs
of birds, milky avalanches, balsamic forests, and the awe-inspiring
silences of revolving walls!

The intoxication of such wheeling flight filled us with a strange joy.
Our journey became wistful, eager, breathless. We became poets, and
the soul of a poet is a chameleon that takes its glow and color from
the surrounding infection. The motion that bore us in daring circles
produced a euthanasia of mind and an exaltation of soul. The jugglery
of flight under such conditions produced a Nirvana of soul and a
Dharana of body. An exquisitely sweet whirlwind of emotion swept
through I know not how many souls on the _Aeropher_, but certainly
through the souls of Lyone and myself.

We both flew round and round like birds in intoxicating converse.
During the progress of the flight, intellect, will and memory
slumbered. I was deprived of the use of all external faculties, while
those of the soul were correspondingly increased. Imagination and
emotion were excited with rapturous energy. Lyone's eyes sparkled with
a celestial joy. She was again the goddess in her ecstasy!

CHAPTER XXVII.

WE REACH EGYPLOSIS.

When I recovered my every-day senses the revolving motion of the
_Aeropher_ had ceased and our flight was confined to an undulating
movement. I was holding the hand of the goddess, who had been in a
hyperaesthetic condition herself during the gyrations of the ship, and
when feeling her senses leaving her she had involuntarily grasped my
hand. Our souls had been the recipients of the same rapturous joy.

When we were once more ourselves, Lyone was anxious to know something
of the character of the women of the outer world. I talked to her
about such women as resembled herself in spiritual fervor.