--and with one accord, they all merged together in the voluptuous
grace of a dance more ravishing, more wild and wondrous than ever
poet pictured in his word-fantasies of fairy-land! Theos drank in
the intoxicating delight of the scene with eager, dazzled eyes and
heavily beating heart, ..the mysterious passion of mingled love
and hatred he felt for Lysia stole over him more strongly than
ever in the sultry air of this strange night, . . this night of
sweet delirium, in which all that was most dangerous and erring in
his nature woke into life and mastered his better will! A curious,
instinctive knowledge swept across his mind,--namely THAT SAH-
LUMA'S EMOTIONS WERE THE FAITHFUL REFLEX OF HIS OWN,--but as he
had felt no anger against his rival in fame, so now he had no
jealousy of his possible rival in love. Their sympathies were too
closely united for distrust to mar the friendship so ardently
begun, ... nevertheless, as he fell resistlessly deeper and deeper
into the glittering snares that were spread for his destruction,
he was CONSCIOUS OF EVIL THOUGH HE LACKED FORCE TO OVERCOME IT. At
any rate, he would save Sah-luma from harm, he resolved, if he
could not save himself! Meantime he watched the bewildering
evolutions and witching entanglements of the gliding maze of fair
faces, snowy bosoms and twining limbs, that palpitated to and fro
under the soft rose-light of the dome like white flowers colored
by the sunset, and, glancing ever and again at Lysia's imperial
sorceress-beauty, he thought dreamily ... "Better the love that
kills than no love at all!" And he thereupon gave himself up a
voluntary captive to the sway of his own passions, determining to
enjoy the immediate present, no matter what the future might have
in store. Outside, the water-lilies nodded themselves to sleep in
their shrouding, dark leaves, . . and the unbroken smoothness of the
lake spread itself out in the moon like a sheet of molten gold