“In truth, I often tried,” she said, with something like a sigh, “but Numidea was not good to fit my subtle needs, and the other one, Electra, was all beyond me.” And here that versatile shadow threw herself into an attitude, and there before me was the Roman lady, so sweet, so enticing, that my heart yearned for her—ah! for the queenly Electra!—all in a moment. But before I could stretch out my arms the airy form had whisked her ethereal draperies toga-wise across her breast, and had risen, and there, towering to the low roof, flashing down scorn and hatred on me, quaking at her feet, shone the very semblance of Electra as I saw her last in the queenly glamour of her vengeance.
“Yes,” said Blodwen, resuming her own form with perfect calmness before I, astounded, could catch my breath, and stroking out the tangles of her long red hair, “there was no doing anything with her, and so, Phœnician, I could not get translated to your material eyes.”
All this was very wonderful, yet presently we were chatting as though there were naught to marvel at. Many were the things we spoke of, many were the wonders that she hinted at, and as she went my curiosity blazed up apace.
“And, fair Princess,” I said presently, “turner of javelins, favorer of mortals, is it then within the power of such as yourself to rule the destiny of us material ones?”
“Not so; else, Phœnician, you were not here!”
This made me a little uncomfortable, but, nothing daunted, I looked the strangest visitor that ever paid a midnight visit full in the face, and persisted: “Tell me, then, you bright reflection of her I loved, how seems this tinsel show of life upon its over side? Is it destiny or man that is master? How looks the flow of circumstances to you?—to us, you will remember, it is vague, inexplicable.”
“You ask me more than I can say,” she answered, “but so far I will go—you, material, live substantially, and before you lies unchecked the illimitable spaces of existence. Of all these you are certain heir.”
“Speak on!” I cried, for now and then her voice and attention flagged. “And is there any rule or sequence in this life of ours—is it for you to guide or mend our happenings?”
“No, Phœnician! You are yourselves the true forgers of the chains that bind you, and that initial ’prenticeship you serve there on your world is ruled by the aggregate of your actions. I tell you, Tyrian,” she exclaimed, with something as much like warmth as could come from such a hazy air-stirred body—“I tell you nothing was ever said or done but was quite immortal; all your little goings and comings, all your deeds and misdeeds, all the myriad leaves of spoken things that have ever come upon the forests of speech, all the rain-drops of action that have gone to make the boundless ocean of human history, are on record. You shake your head, and cannot understand? Perhaps I should not wonder at it.”
“And have all these things left a record upon the great books of life, and is it given to the beings of the air to refer to them, even as yonder hermit finds secreted on his yellow vellums the things of long ago?”