I looked into the depths and saw amid the writhing forms that filled the abyss, a running stream of fire that flowed among them, and seared and shriveled some and twisted others into strange shapes, but still itself preserved its own undying energy insatiate. A monster that devoured its devotees, for at times I seemed to see it as a being having a form defined though monstrous. It fascinated me, and, as I looked longer and more intensely it took form more definite, with a strange beauty, wild and weird, yet strangely potent to attract and hold the gazer in the spell of admiration that bewildered all the mind, and fired the sense with strange thrills and throbbings of unsatisfied desires, vague but intense, painful yet so seductive that the mind, bathed in oblivion of former joys, craved only the consuming kiss of that fierce flame. The form was superhuman, but as yet I saw no face nor knew to what to liken the strange shape, so wild and yet so strangely human that it seemed a part of me when first I looked. But in a little while I knew that I was but a part of it--scarce even that, a shadow looking towards a light that must consume it. I fought against the fascination that seemed as if it would absorb my soul and scorch my mind and sweep my body into its seething vortex of undying fire; and as I fought to hold myself against the influence, it seemed as if it, that living fire, took form and features and became the image of a God with wondrous eyes that glowed as do the embers of the fire when burning clear with caverns of throbbing radiance and unresting palpitations, flushing and gleaming, or sinking into momentary dulness like a sulky face swept by a passing cloud of temper. But strange and fascinating as it was, that beauty seemed to be unable to define itself; there was a _want_ that left in the beholder a wild yearning, in itself so keen as to appear the most intense delight mingled and tinged with woe unutterable. And then I knew that this on which I gazed was a reflection of some higher thing, an _image only_ on the waves of that deep ocean in which the world and all things corporeal float formless and uncreate until the creative fire of Eros pierces its depths, and awakening all its energies into activity, mirrors itself upon the seething vortex of illusion. Each one who looks into the depths shall see this image; they who have no heart to search the depths of beings shall feel the fire within their veins and hail the presence of a God and feed the flame with their own substance, giving their lives in acts of impious sacrifice to the consuming fires of the lower world, responsive to the passions that so insistingly demand the tribute of self-immolation on the altar of desire.