"Hast thou found man's relation to God? The silver sky waits for thy soul."
And now in the heart of the woman was no bitterness, no rebellion, only knowledge of the truth. And, answering the question of the Lord, spoken in the voice of her dead, she whispered, softly:
"Man and man, as man and God, are bound by those ties of eternal love that made the covenant of Creation. Consciously or unconsciously, all living things must live with this as their law, for they are God's children, God's brothers, God Himself sent forth to wander for a while in time, but in the end returning to their eternal source, which is God.
"All the sin, all the sorrow of the world, I have known, have suffered. Yet no loss nor grief can take away the great joy of love, its purity, its perfection.
"I acknowledge the wisdom of the All-Father displayed in His creation. Let Him do with me as He will."
As she ceased to speak a blinding, silver stillness wrapped her about and held her immovable. From its depths in the far-off heavens there came to her ears sounds such as she had known in the long-ago: the song of the infinite, the infinite, unceasing chorus, the wind-choir that sings the Creator's hymn.
Still she could see the green fields and the water, and the ferny palms above her head. Still she beheld the broad river running full of pink and molten gold. Still the breath of the evening wind came to her lips. The world was all about her; but she was no longer of it all.
High over her head, in the unclouded sky, a vast web of shimmering silver was spreading out and out, like a broad, firmly woven veil. It scintillated with dazzling light into Istar's upraised and half-blind eyes, yet it struck them with no pain. It was the silver sky of Babylonish dreams opening above her, while the celestial voices sang ever more softly, but ever more beautifully, the pure, swaying harmonies of the great hymn of freedom. God's presence lived in the beauty of the earthly evening scarcely less than in the splendor of that heavenly one. In the midst of the scene of supernatural wonder, Istar sank to her knees, and there remained transfixed before the miracle that came to be enacted before her.
From out of the silver-spun cloud two figures, at first merely dense, opaque bodies of mist, began to descend from the heights, growing gradually more and more distinct in form as they came, leaving behind them a silver trail that moved and swayed, fine and threadlike, in the air, above them. As they approached her, Istar, in her ecstasy, quickly recognized them both; the one, his floating locks of deepest auburn star-crowned, his trailing garments of changing blue, carrying in his hand the sunset lyre, was Allaraine, the archetype of song. The second was more spiritual still, a storm-eyed being with thick, black locks uncrowned, clothed in misty white, girdled in silver, bearing in his hand a palm-branch of the same shimmering white metal, his face, hands, and feet showing transparently pure, while in his back, upon the left side, was a mark of brilliant light, glowing with ruby fire, and resembling a hallowed wound—the releasing dagger-stroke that had freed Belshazzar from Babylon—Belshazzar, beloved of the woman to whom he came again.