“But—but——” Words at last came of her consternation. “I thought there could be no birth after the first death?”
He answered with guarded elation. “Someone you used to believe in proved to you to-day that laws were made to be broken. Surely I am the last whom that law of the first death could coerce—I who never have died.”
“Nor were you born, Your Lowness. You say you had no mother. Never have you been of the flesh, so how can you expect——”
“I am not to be classed with the flesh. I am a god,” he interrupted. “Haven’t there been children of other gods? Why, even the Great-I-Am had a morganatic son!”
Through a corridor of the palace he led her and into the private wing of whose magnificence she often had heard. Upon a divan sheened over as with an embroidered altar-cloth he placed her; with one elbow crooked around the hump of her knee, lolled at her feet; with a new possessorship stroked her bare ankles and, at times, her throat and cheeks. The while, he descanted in detail upon what he now revealed as his “experiment.”
Only since meeting her had he foreseen a day when he should find irksome his seat on the throne, when affairs of state would bring him greater ennui than official sins divertissement. After The Day, when he had been acknowledged over all and the Universe had been let loose in an unending administration of outlawry, would not he, as well as his aides, be entitled to some reward of vice? And why continue in a career of perpetual exertion after his utmost had been done? As though human nature could not be trusted to increase in evil of its own impetus, once punitive bars were laid! Should not he be freed to tread the path of dalliance—to realize some such gentle vices as he had seen to satisfy the doughtiest devils of Earth?
Desire for an heir-apparent to his throne of late had grown in him. Could she not imagine the outcome of his ambition—a youthful demon born to dominance, bred to brutality, schooled to undreamt possibilities of fiendishness? Strong as steel in mental culpability, he should have the “chance” denied his self-made sire. Never should he know, hence should not fear defeat. With a super-divine intolerance, he would accept and hold his sovereignty. Although of the spirit, he should inherit a talent for strong visibility, taking his form from his father and from his mother a subtlety of appeal such as god nor man yet had possessed. A beauty of countenance irresistible should be his—features of marble pale as the ghosts of Dolores’ victims—lips that quivered from the very delicacy of the lies they lied, eyes that veiled in mists of mercy the utmost truculence.
Could she not see the child of his imagination? Let her open wide those crime-dark eyes of hers; to-night let his moth-like fancies bask in their purple flame.
When he, leaning against her, lifted himself to try his thought, the bride-soul clutched her forehead and shuddered back among the pillows as if to shield brain, as well as eyes. Yet even to her own ears her protest sounded both sincere and false.
“You must be mad—mad—to dream of such a thing.”