me dumb with fear."

"Hushnoly," said Lyone, "I have ever found you faithful to my
interests, and I will now confide in you my purposes. You are a man of
wisdom, calm and conservative, and can rest happy in the possession of
your counterpart soul. Your character has become moulded by your long
novitiate until you have become a part of the institution itself. To
think of any other state of things is to you an impossibility. On
thousands of souls here, your inflexible laws have only developed a
rebellious energy that will some day utterly destroy the fabric of
Egyplosis. The true union of souls is not artificial restraint and the
present calmness is only the pause that preludes the explosion."

"But do you, supreme goddess, indeed desire to leave us forever? Will
you profane your holy office? Will you despoil the temple of ideal
love?" said Hushnoly, with emotion.

"You think it monstrous," said Lyone, "that I should desire to uproot
principles so fixed and permanent. You can judge, then, how fierce
must be the passion that causes me to antagonize duty consecrated by
the ties and memories of my holy office."

"To break away from a responsibility so supreme," I said, "argues
alone an extraordinary force. Your very system creates just such a
love as this. Here souls are required to meet in rapture, and yet to
stand balanced, as it were, on the thin edge of naked swords, and fall
neither this way nor that. The development of a purely romantic love
effeminates the race. The example of Egyplosis if carried out
universally would obliterate the nation in one generation. The nation
is wiser than its creed. Let us therefore choose the wiser path."

"It was the dream of your noble parents," said Hushnoly to Lyone, "to
see you supreme goddess of Egyplosis. When you obtained this peerless
honor they died. Your mother, dying, implored you to remember your
vows, and to be ever true to your high office. 'Love only duty,' was
her last sigh. If you love aught else, there is but a cruel death for
you, and your memory will be an everlasting disgrace. Will you, the
ideal of hopeless love, be the first to prove faithless?"

"What you say is true," I said, replying for Lyone, "but what is duty?
Lyone not only owes a duty to her office, but also to herself. Her
duty to herself is to rise up and break down this monstrous
environment that chains down her soul, and her duty to these ten
thousand souls is to tell them that an institution tha