She paused, ... and Alwyn met her clear, steadfast looks with a swift glance of something like defiance. For as she spoke, his previous idea concerning her came back upon him with redoubled force. He was keenly conscious of the vehement fever of love into which her presence had thrown him,--but all the same he was unable to dispossess himself of the notion that she was a pupil and an accomplice of Heliobas, thoroughly trained and practiced in his mysterious doctrine, and that therefore she most probably had some magnetic power in herself that at her pleasure not only attracted him TO her, but also held him thus motionless at a distance, FROM her. She talked, of course, in an indefinite mystic way either to intimidate or convince him ... but, . . and he smiled a little.. in any case it only rested with himself to unmask this graceful pretender to angelic honors! And while he thought thus, her soft tones trembled on the silence again, ... he listened as a dreaming mariner might listen to the fancied singing of the sea-fairies. "Through long bright aeons of endless glory," she said--"I have waited and prayed for thee! I have pleaded thy cause before the blinding splendors of God's Throne, I have sung the songs of thy native paradise, but thou, grown dull of hearing, hast caught but the echo of the music! Life after life hast thou lived, and given no thought to me--yet I remember and am faithful! Heaven is not all Heaven to me without thee, my Beloved, . . and now in this time of thy last probation, . . now, if thou lovest me indeed ..." "Love thee?" suddenly exclaimed Theos, half beside himself with the strange passion of yearning her words awakened in him--"Love thee, Edris?--Aye! ... as the gods loved when earth was young! ... with the fullness of the heart and the vigor of glad life even so I love thee! What sayest thou of Heaven? ... Heaven is here--here on this bridal field of Ardath, o'er-canopied with stars! Come, sweet one, . . cease to play this mystic midnight fantasy--I have done with dreams! ... Edris, be thyself! ... for them art Woman, not Angel--thy kiss was warm as wine! Nay, why shrink from me? ." this, as she retreated still further away, her eyes flashing with unearthly brilliancy, . . "I will make thee a queen, fair Edris, as poets ever make queens of the women they love,--my fame shall be a crown for thee to wear,--a crown that the whole world, gazing on, shall envy!"