"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 that constantly antagonizes nature is immoral. Here refined souls," I continued, "seek the cloister, not for peace, but for ecstatic anguish. They love and weep, and thus agitated they grow at once weak and violent, and can never accommodate themselves to the serious purposes of life. Thus sacrificed on the altar of a false god, weary of a life of barren blessedness, you will discover, if you but seriously inquire into it, that this palace is purely a prison for thousands of noble souls." As I spoke, Hushnoly clasped his head with his hands and groaned. "With the downfall of Egyplosis," he murmured, "farewell delights, farewell tendernesses, farewell mystical, chivalrous love!" "Do not be so dejected," said Lyone; "your imagination gives you but a capricious view of the future, which will be even nobler than the past." The high priest could hear no more, and left us seized with affright as to the future, and mourning the anticipated downfall of Egyplosis. Lyone, far from exhibiting fear, grew enthusiastic over our projected _coup d'etat_, that would certainly, if successful, create an organic change in the constitution of the kingdom. We discussed the situation at length, and determined to leave Egyplosis for Calnogor forthwith. I could in some measure appreciate the struggle undergone by Lyone necessary to sever her forever from so ineffable a retreat. But passion was stronger than environment, and it was duly announced that the supreme goddess and the commander of the _Polar King_ and their immediate followers would leave for Calnogor forthwith.