“Have you no ambition that you scorn the queenship of the Universe? That’s what my offer means. I have taken none into the secret of my Great Intention. And until I feel that we are one in spirit as in state, I shall not fully confide in you. But I’ll say that the day of my deliverance is close at hand. Soon my supremacy shall be established from everlasting to everlasting. Ruthlessness shall rule before the time of the end. How long, do you suppose, can He stand who is self-acknowledged to be all this weakness called love, against The Hate, which am I?”
The question he blazed into her eyes, now uplifted to the demand of his.
“Little fool, how dare you hesitate? Consider what you are and who I am—your smallness and my greatness. Consider Eternity. Hell is my home-land. I have conquered Earth. High Heaven only is to gain. The time is near when the Castling from Paradise shall return unto his own. Judgment shall be damned on that day. And I shall be Jehovah. The Day—The Day!”
In an ecstasy of egoism, he caught the spirit-girl by the shoulders; willed her up the steps and into his great carved chair.
“Sit you in the seat of the mighty,” he ordered. “Learn the sensation of gracing a throne. Queen of three worlds—my queen—accept the salute of your most abject slave!”
Sinking to one knee he lowered his lips to her bare ankle. The spot they pressed stung as though from nettles, then turned redder than the rose-bud tied against her instep.
“I am a suppliant, Queen Dolores—I who never was a suppliant before.” His lips increased in ardor through the contact. “I need you. I want you. But I want you to acknowledge the need of me. Always have I jeered at mortal men who plead for favor. I don’t know what’s come over me. I could take you and make you and break you all in one flash of my will. And yet—I ask you, Dolores. I ask you.”
The spirit-girl realized that the time had come for her to speak, but she could not force her tongue. Gone was her self-reliance of the early dawn. She had come prepared, but not for this. Overwhelmed she felt by his declaration as she had not been by his threats.
The sensation was familiar; recalled those days of uncertainty in the Cabot home when she had been tried by the evasive ways of John. Then her fear had been for him and, through him, for herself. Now he and she were included only as infinitesimal atoms in the universal disaster that impended.
Look high as Heaven, look low as Hell, she was afraid.