And it was then I saw this wonderful thing happen, poignant with common human drama, intensifying the reality of the whole amazing experience. For she turned suddenly to him, her face alight and radiant. She would not let him accept the awful risk. Her arms went out to hold him to her. He drove her back. “I open wide the channel of my life and soul!” he cried, with a gesture of the entire body that made it relaxed and unresisting. He stepped backwards a little from her touch. “It must be through _me!_” And there was anguish in her tone that seemed to press all possible human passion into the single sentence: “I, too, throw myself open! I cannot let you go from me!” He moved still further from her. It seemed to me he went at prodigious speed, yet grew no smaller to the eye. The withdrawal belonged to some part of his being that I was aware of inwardly. Streams of fire and wind went with him. They followed. And I heard her voice in agonised pursuit. She raised her hands as in supplication, but to whom or what I knew not. She fought to prevent. She fought to offer herself instead. But also she offered the body as yet unclaimed--untenanted. “He who is in the Fire and in the Sun ... I call upon His power. I offer myself!” I heard her cry. His answering voice seemed terrible: “The Law forbids. You hold Them back from me.” And then as from a greater distance, the voice continued more faintly: “You prevent. It has to be! Help me before it is too late; help me ... or ... I ... fail!” Fail! I heard the awful word like thunder in the heavens. The conflict of their wills, the distress of it was terrible. At this last moment she realised that the strain was more than he could withstand--he would go from her in that separation which is the body’s death. She saw it all; there was division in her will and energies. Opposing herself to the justice he had invoked, she influenced the invasion of the elemental Powers, offering herself as channel in the hope of saving him. Her human desire weighed the balance--turning it just against him. Her insight clouded with emotion. She increased the risk for him, and at the same time left open to the great invading Powers another channel--the line of least resistance, the empty vehicle all prepared within herself. To me it was mercilessly clear. I tried to speak, but found no words to utter; my tongue refused to frame a single sound; nor could I move my limbs. I heard Julius only, his voice calling like a distant storm. “I call upon the Fire and Wind to enter me, and pass to their eternal home ... whence you and I ... and he ...” His voice fell curiously away into a gulf; there was weakness in it. I saw her frail body shake from head to foot. She swayed as though about to fall. And then her voice, strong as a bugle-call, rang out: “I claim it by--my _love_....!”