nvincible music issued from gigantic tubes that
pierced the body of the throne itself with fresh and warlike
explosions of melody. I was filled with a maddening delight, until
consciousness could hardly bear the strain any longer. I cried aloud,
amid a Chimborazo of song, a hundred-cratered Popocatapetl of sweet
strains. The audience, enraptured with the climax, became an inferno
of passion, laughter tears and felicity!

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE MYSTERY OF EGYPLOSIS.

The palace of the goddess at Egyplosis was a component part of the
vast quadrangle known as the supernal palace. The view therefrom
embraced the wide inner garden of the entire palace of temples,
discovering jungles of shrubs and flowers of all imaginable hues,
interspersed with lakes sleeping in their marble basins like enormous
jewels. Fountains of solid silver gushed forth a brilliant foam of
waters amid the embowering foliage, and there glad priests, in the
society of priestesses sweeter than the flowers themselves, dreamed
life away in enthusiastic peace. Surrounding all was the high and
glorious palace, forming a background, on the design of which
imagination and art had been entirely exhausted.

The scene the day following the Ritual of the installation of a
twin-soul in the temple of Egyplosis was a boudoir in the palace of
the goddess. It was a large apartment, whose walls were hung with
panels of rose-colored velvet, embroidered with gray-green silk
foliage. In one large tapestry, the hands of loving priestesses had
embroidered a scene in the garden of Egyplosis. On a dais, upon a
couch of soft red silk upholstery sat Lyone, swathed in draperies of
shrimp pink and pale peacock green, embroidered with ivory-white silk.
A large terra-cotta silk rug, whose only ornament was an elaborate
border, covered the floor. The goddess wore a belt of aquelium
serpents having tulips in their mouths. Heavy terrelium bracelets
adorned her wrists, and she wore a diminutive tiara on her head.

I sat on a luxurious seat, the sole guest of the goddess. I was
rapidly learning from the divinity the mystery of Egyplosis. I was
especially anxious to find out how the jewel of one hundred years of
youth could be grafted into the ordinary existence. An idea so
splendid seemed to be the germ of earthly immortality. We were
discussing the subject of hopeless love, and I asked her if she
considered life and love were the same element.

"Life and love are synonymous,"