"May not? I shall lose the music—the communion—"
"All things divine will be lost. You enter into the wilderness of the world."
Istar bent her head and was silent. She who had seemed to understand so much, realized nothing. At last, lifting her head heavily, she asked: "When does it come, this farewell to—my home?"
"Not until you, of your own will, renounce divinity."
"Not till I seek it? Nay, this very night I asked it of the Almighty."
"Yea, and the cry was heard. Mortality shall be yours whenever of your own free will you renounce us all for that which mortality will give."
"Ah, then—then, immortal one—I shall remain the Narahmouna."[7]
Allaraine shook his head thoughtfully and said: "Of that I do not know. I have brought the message. Sleep, celestial woman. I go."
Obediently Istar lay down upon her couch, and the white eyelids closed over the unfathomable eyes. Allaraine, standing over her, looking down upon her mortal form with infinite pity, infinite ignorance, lifted up his lyre once more, and, by the magic of his power, Istar's spirit quickly fled to the land of dreams. There Allaraine left her to await the dawn of the new day, with its monotonous, wearying duties, and its weight of dim, indefinable foreboding, that as yet was all of the earth-life of Narahmouna the divine.