“And Eleanor came by and took my soul in the palm of her hand, as the angel did Faust’s, and carried it to a cavern by the sea-side and dropped it in; and I fell and fell for ages. And all the velvet mosses, rock flowers, and sparkling spars and ores, fell with me, round me, in showers of diamonds, whirlwinds of emerald and ruby, and pattered into the sea that moaned below and were quenched; and the light lessened above me to one small spark, and vanished; and I was in darkness, and turned again to my dust. * * * * * “Sand—sand—nothing but sand! The air was full of sand, drifting over granite temples, and painted kings and triumphs, and the skulls of a former world, and I was an ostrich, flying madly before the simoon wind, and the giant sand pillars, which stalked across the plain hunting me down. And Lillian was an Amazon queen, beautiful, and cold, and cruel; and she rode upon a charmed horse, and carried behind her on her saddle, a spotted ounce, which was my cousin; and, when I came near her, she made him leap down and course me. And we ran for miles and for days through the interminable sand, till he sprang on me, and dragged me down. And as I lay quivering and dying, she reined in her horse above me, and looked down at me with beautiful pitiless eyes; and a wild Arab tore the plumes from my wings, and she took them and wreathed them in her golden hair. The broad and blood-red sun sank down beneath the sand, and the horse and the Amazon and the ostrich plumes shone blood-red in his lurid rays. * * * * *