d full of anguish, bearing
treasures of love and tears. I desired self-sacrifice, I wanted to
smile on every one, to help every one. I loved life; I had no fear of
death. My capacity for rapture seemed to expand continually. Every
scene I gazed upon trembled in a new blaze of delight. Thoughts, like
lightning, rent open new worlds of passion and tenderness, wherein I
moved as a goddess peerless and supreme. But when the tomb closed upon
my heart of hearts I begged them to lay me by his side and seal the
door upon us forever. The glory of life had departed, and day after
day I swooned upon the sarcophagus that held my treasure, my life."

Lyone was unusually excited, and to divert her attention from the past
I spoke of the present, of her proud position as supreme goddess of
Atvatabar.

"How does it affect you," I exclaimed, "to be the recipient of such
adoration as you receive as goddess?"

"At first it was soul maddening," she replied; "I thought I should
never be able to sustain such adoration. My soul, blinded and
bewildered by the incense of song and prayer, seemed unable to bear
the intoxication. Even yet, as I sit upon the throne of the gods,
fantastic, astonishing emotions thrill me into swooning away. Oh, it
is incomparably glorious to hear around you those earthquake surges of
prayer, to see souls quivering with adoring love. I feel at times as
though I were the cone of a volcano radiating fire and flame into a
burning sky!

"Then, again, I smile, and feel as I smile that I have power over life
and death--oh, you do not know what love is--you do not know its
tremendous power until you feel its splendid flame breathed from ten
thousand souls clasping your shrieking soul in a blood-crimson
embrace! If thoughts be things it makes me a creator. If thoughts can
chisel matter, then I am gracious in face and figure. Men say my flesh
is smooth as marble, soft as velvet, and bright as gold, even as the
forms of our priests and priestesses are sculptured and colored by the
thoughts of love.

"Only a goddess knows such thoughts as hers that burn in the soul like
fluid gold. Imagination fills me at times with vast and phantasmal
splendors. Adoration glorifies me like light raining on the palms and
palaces. I see shapes of burning sweetness, and the air around me is
laden with the caresses of heavy, strange perfumes. Unclothed
raptures, exquisitely soft and tender, surround me, like heaven
opening its wings of flame