Higher than the arch-blasphemer’s shrieks of derision, fugued the storm winds without. At their demand, the entrance doors swung wide; admitted them. Across the great room they swept, gentling only at the flutter of veilings about the girl-soul at bay against the wall. Close after them lightnings slashed the darkness. Behind her head, from tip to tip of her upraised hands, thence to her sandled feet, they concentrated in rays of blinding light. Crouched to spring, Satan fell back as if struck. In the down-shed blaze his face worked with superstition. His whine of a maddened dog slashed across the eyes with a whip, ended in two gasped words. “_The Cross!_” Into power unmeasured by watts or kilowatts increased the rays. They irradiated the face of her whose shape they framed with a beauty never before seen in Gehenna--the beauty of realized hope. The uproar of the storm concentrated in one stupendous crash. From out the contrasting stillnesses, there then spoke a voice calmer and deeper than the deepest tone of the sea--“a voice ... as the voice of many waters and ... of a great thunder and ... of harpers harping with their harps”: “_Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God._” Prone fell the Destroyer, lest he be destroyed. Face downward before that sign, which was the sign of his one fear, he writhed upon the floor. From his forked tongue of a snake hissed threats and pleas: “Go away! How dare you trespass into the kingdom I have made for myself? Don’t blast me. You promised time until Judgment. I’ll give up the girl-shade. I’ll do anything you say. Don’t blast me now. I might, you know, repent.” Without daring to look up, he tugged at the hem of Dolores’ robe. “You’re to go--to leave Gehenna,” he upflung in his immortal fright. “Don’t wait to prepare. Take this signet ring. It will pass you through the gates. Hurry, lest you ruin me with the rest of those that craved you. Go, Dolores. As you love me--as you hate--for Hell’s sake, _go_!” For long after she had gone he lay. Only his lips moved, muttering. “He could have finished me that time. He must have certain powers of His own, like--like her. Since He can come and go at will, I wonder why He waits. To-night--I feel afraid--that my Great Intention----” The winds sounded to be subsiding. Evidently they had roused in his spirit-bride’s defense. In time he risked a glance toward the Sign. Entirely it had faded. Not a glimmer of it remained to place that picture of wondrous loveliness which lately it had lit. A sob racked His Lowness. His hands searched about, as though for some treasure he had lost. “Dolores, _Dolores_, Grief to Men and me. What a fate, to learn love from the loss of it!” His fingers found something to clutch. Sitting up, he examined what they contained--fragments of the illusion of her veil. He bathed his face in them; swayed sensuously to the feel of them.