and panoply we impose on the faithful, who like thee believe in
their own deathless and divinely constituted natures, and enjoy to
the full the grand Conceit that persuades them of their right to
Immortality!"

Her words carried with them a certain practical positiveness of
meaning, and Theos was somewhat impressed by their seeming truth.
After all, it WAS a curious and unfounded conceit of a man to
imagine himself the possessor of an immortal soul,--and yet ... if
all things were the outcome of a divine Creative Influence, was it
not unjust of that Creative Influence to endow all humanity with
such a belief if it had no foundation whatever? And could
injustice be associated with divine law? ...

He, Theos, for instance, was certain of his own immortality,--so
certain that, surrounded as he was by this brilliant company of
evident atheists, he felt himself to be the only real and positive
existing Being among an assembly of Shadow-figures,--but it was
not the time or the place to enter into a theological discussion,
especially with Lysia, . . and for the moment at least, he allowed
her assertions to remain uncontradicted. He sat, however, in a
somewhat stern silence, now and then glancing wistfully and
anxiously at Sah-luma, on whom the potent wines were beginning to
take effect, and who had just thrown himself down on the dais at
Lysia's feet, close to the tigress that still lay couched there in
immovable quiet. It was a picture worthy of the grandest painter's
brush, ... that glistening throne black as jet, with the fair form
of Lysia shining within it, like a white sea-nymph at rest in a
grotto of ocean-stalactites, . . the fantastically attired negresses
on each side, with their waving peacock-plumes,--the vivid