Again and again Theos asked himself--"If Sah-luma of his own accord, and despite all warning, deliberately rushed into deadly peril, could I, even loving him as I do, rescue him?"--And as he pondered on this, a strange answer shaped itself unbidden in his brain--an answer that seemed as though it were spoken aloud by some interior voice.. "No,--no!--ten thousand times no! You could not save him any more than you could save yourself from the results of your own misdoing! If you voluntarily choose evil, not all the forces in the world can lift you into good,--if you voluntarily choose danger, not all the gods can bring you into safety! FREE WILL is the divine condition attached to human life, and each man by thought, word, and deed, determines his own fate, and decides his own future!" He sighed despondingly, ... a curious, vague contrition stirred within him, ... he felt as though HE were in some mysterious way to blame for all his poet-friend's short-comings! In a few minutes he found himself on the broad marble embankment, close to the very spot from whence he had first beheld the beautiful High Priestess sailing slowly by in all her golden pomp and splendor, and as he thought of her now, a shudder, half of aversion, half of desire, quivered through him, flushing his brows with the warm uprising blood that yet burned rebelliously at the remembrance of her witching, perfect loveliness! Here too he had met Sah-luma, . . ah Heaven!--how many things had happened since then! ... how much he had seen and heard! ... Enough, at any rate, to convince him, that the men and women of Al-Kyris were more or less the same as those of other great cities he seemed to have known in far-off, half-forgotten days,--that they plotted against each other, deceived each other, accused each other falsely, murdered each other, and were fools, traitors, and egotists generally, after the customary fashion of human pigmies,--that they set up a Sham to serve as Religion, Gold being their only god,--that the rich wantoned in splendid luxury, and wilfully neglected the poor,--that the King was a showy profligate, ruled by a treacherous courtesan, just like many other famous Kings and Princes, who, because of their stalwart, martial bearing, and a certain surface good-nature, manage to conceal their vices from the too lenient eyes of the subjects they mislead,--and that finally all things were evidently tending toward some great convulsion and upheaval possibly arising from discontent and dissension among the citizens themselves,--or, likelier still, from the sudden invasion of a foreign foe,--for any more terrific termination of events did not just then suggest itself to his imagination. Absorbed in thought, he walked some paces along the embankment, before he perceived that a number of people were already assembled there,--men, women, and children, who, crowding eagerly together to the very edge of the parapet, appeared to be anxiously watching the waters below.