Jason Croft, erecting his dynamo, harnessing it to his turbines with heavy beltings of gnuppa hide, felt that the very desire he had wakened in Naia's soul, would do its work better while it remained unsatisfied, would gain in strength as the days passed into weeks, would receive an added poignancy when she arrived at Himyra and found him gone again to the hills, engaged without any seeming distraction attributable to herself, on his work.
For Croft knew very, very well that one of the great laws of all mating consists in this—that until mating itself is accomplished, one element retreats, while the other as constantly seeks, before desire itself in the one awakens desire in the other, and thereby bringing both elements together, strikes out of them life's fire.
Yet, night after night, his work finished, stretched on a rough couch, Croft yearned for this woman of all the worlds to his soul. Night after night he lay picturing her as he had known her, revealing their every association together, from his first sight of her in her father's carriage, to those two weird astral meetings which had occurred. He Pictured her beauty of face and form—the supple strength of the latter, its litheness, its wonderful grace. He saw it in his mind's eye as he had seen it time and again in life.
And there were times when he quivered, and stretched out his arms which throbbed with a strange, numb aching, remembering as it seemed in their very substance, the soft, warm pressure of her flesh, the glory of her former surrender to the caress of their embrace. There were times when his lips writhed as he recalled their first meeting with her mouth—that quick, spontaneous giving and taking of a kiss, before she had cried out that now—now—he must win her, or else by the customs of her country, she stood a maid disgraced—had cried it, and yet before she left him on that same occasion, had crept to him, inviting a second kiss.
And though at such things Croft thrilled as may any man thrill, at the thought of the one woman who can drive him to madness as a man, yet unlike the ordinary mortal he thrilled still more at the beauty of her soul. For unlike the customary lover, Croft had seen it—and because of his knowledge of such matters, because he knew the meanings in a spiritual sense of certain vibrations—because he could interpret the meaning involved in auric colors—he knew that only a chastely pure spirit possessed an aura of blue and gold. Wherefore great as was his glory in his recollections of her physical beauty and charm, greater still was his exaltation recalling how even like her golden hair and purple eyes, that glorious image of her being he had twice called from it, glowed.
Glorious was she in body, beautiful in soul. And Croft lying while the night wrapped the mountain, and the stream, plunging over the rocks in its bed, sent its murmur to his ears, renewed once more his purpose, and swore by all the highest forces in his conception, that ere this thing was finished, that glory and beauty should be his. But in his own way—the true way—the way in which two chemical atoms might come together—gladly—almost unconsciously because of compelling force, affinity, desire—let the word used be what it might since in the great law of Zitu or God, they were the same. And it was so Croft meant to claim that woman, body and soul, whom he felt was his true twin—that glorious complement of his entire nature—that lode star of his being who had drawn him to her—across the empty void between the stars.
On the fourteenth day Robur came up from Himyra at Croft's request. Jason met him as he descended from his motor and led him into the newly constructed power-house. There, on a masonry and copper base, insulated by a heavy plate of glass, stood what was as yet Tamarizia's most wonderful device. Bolted and belted to the driving-gear of the turbine it stood, waiting but the driving force of the waters through a penstock to wake it into life.
Croft's eyes blazed with something of excitement as he gestured toward it. "Behold, Rob," he said, "with this shall we harness the lightnings and bid them do our will. With this shall we light the streets of Himyra and the fire-urns along the Na, and the palace, the houses of all men in Himyra first, in all Aphur at the last. With this shall we ere we are done, drive the wheels in many shops, which now are turned by men and beasts in treadmills or upon the windlass bars. So shall it come at last that by the mere pressure of a hand upon a lever those wheels shall move. These things I promise you, Rob—behold." He waved a hand to a captain standing by the door of the house. And he in turn signaled to a workman not far off. And he, who had been waiting, lifted a trumpet to his lips and blew a blast. It was the sign on which Croft had agreed for the men high up on the mountain to open a penstock gate.