“I do not know,” returned Féraz moodily, “except that all the world seemed wrong. I wondered how God could endure so much degradation on the face of one of His planets, without some grand, divine protest.”
“The protest is always there,” said El-Râmi quickly. “Silent, but eternal, in the existence of Good in the midst of Evil.”
Féraz lifted his eyes and rested their gaze on his brother with an expression of unutterable affection.
“El-Râmi, keep me with you!” he entreated; “never let me leave you again! I think I must be crazed if the world is what it seems, and my life is so entirely opposed to it; but, if so, I would rather be crazed than sane. In my wanderings to-night, on my way home hither, I met young girls and women who must have been devils in disguise, so utterly were they lost to every sense of womanhood and decency. I saw men, evil-looking and wretched, who seemed waiting but the chance to murder, or commit any other barbarous crime for gold. I saw little children, starving and in rags; old and feeble creatures, too, in the last stage of destitution, without a passer-by to wish them well; all things seemed foul and dark and hopeless, and when I entered here I felt—ah, God knows what I felt!—that you were my Providence, that this was my home, and that surely some Angel dwelt within and hallowed it with safety and pure blessing!”
A sudden remorse softened his voice, his beautiful eyes were dim with tears.
“He remembers and thinks of Lilith!” thought El-Râmi quickly, with a singular jealous tightening emotion at his heart; but aloud he said gently:
“If one day in the ‘world’ has taught you to love this simple abode of ours, my dear Féraz, more than you did before, you have had a most valuable lesson. But do not be too sure of yourself. Remember, you resented my authority, and you wished to escape from my influence. Well, now——”
“Now I voluntarily place myself under both,” said Féraz rising and standing before him with bent head. “El-Râmi, my brother and my friend, do with me as you will! If from you come my dreams, in God’s name let me dream! If from your potent will, exerted on my spirit, springs the fountain of the music which haunts my life, let me ever be a servant of that will! With you I have had happiness, health, peace, and mysterious joy, such as the world could never comprehend; away from you, though only for a day, I have been miserable. Take my complete obedience, El-Râmi, for what it is worth; you give me more than my life’s submission can ever repay.”
El-Râmi stepped up more closely to him, and, laying both hands on his shoulders, looked him seriously in the eyes.
“My dear boy, consider for a moment how you involve yourself,” he said earnestly, yet with great kindliness. “Remember the old Arabic volume you chanced upon, and what it said concerning the mystic powers of ‘influence.’ Did you quite realise it, and all that it implies?”