es of eternal beauty. These
flamboyant shapes and mystical colors presuppose the strange
illuminations that had pierced tender and extravagant hearts.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE INSTALLATION OF A TWIN-SOUL (CONTINUED).

While priest and priestess were folded with mutual emotion two of the
loveliest souls took the place of the high priest and priestess on the
silver pavement. The girl was young and tender, golden white in
complexion with crimson lips. Her figure was swathed in a vermilion
robe, on the breast of which was embroidered in outline a sea-green
sun whose swaying rays reached the furthest parts of her garment. Her
pale blue hair was crowned with a chaplet of daffodils. The youth wore
a robe of scarlet silk embroidered with a golden sun similar in design
to that of the priestess. His pose was singularly noble. These two
souls were about to become priest and priestess, and, after having
taken the vows of hopeless love in presence of the goddess, high
priest and priestess and congregation of twin-souls, they sang the
following anthem, accompanied by a wailing storm of music from several
hundred violins, entitled:

THE TWIN-SOUL.

PRIEST.

Love is a heated furnace that devours
The thickest ice; love is a sweet moist wind
That cools the fevered desert with its balm.
There is no rain nor heat, yea, even snow
Is warm and rosy to ideal souls
That shudder in life's sweetest ecstasies.
If love, that makes ideal life, that dwells
In fragrant silences, makes green the grass,
And far more tender the diviner flowers,
It surely makes both bold and delicate
The warm superiority of flesh
Of that strange, sacred soul that dwells with mine.

The clear, yet golden whiteness of the form
That shines through pale green diaphane,
Showing its pliant beauty, is the dress
Of that rapt soul that is all tenderness.
Her brow is crowned with wistful daffodils,
Making her fair face fairer, and her eyes
Are clouded sapphires; yea, her perfect lips
(Whereon my soul will dwell for evermore)
Clear blood-red rubies! The sweet hand holds
Red poppies and blue lotus, and the soft
And sulphur blossomed wind flower. If such dress
Enshrine a soul as perfect, if the curves
That make her form voluptuous describe
The splendor of her soul (and this I know),
Love has no purer temple, nor more swee