She read swiftly, and with apparent incredulity, and a tremor passed over her tall, gaunt frame. She looked at him wonderingly and wistfully, while he, standing before her, returned the look steadfastly, and seemed to be concentrating all his thoughts upon her with some fixed intention. After a minute or two he turned aside, and again wrote on the slate; this time the words ran thus:
“Speak; you are at liberty.”
With a deep shuddering sigh, she extended her hands appealingly.
“Master!” she exclaimed; and, before he could prevent her, she had dropped on her knees. “Forgive—forgive!” she muttered. “Terrible is thy power, O El-Râmi, ruler of spirits! terrible, mystic, and wonderful! God must have given thee thy force, and I am but the meanest of slaves to rebel against thy command. Yet out of wisdom comes not happiness, but great grief and pain; and as I live, El-Râmi, in my rebellion I but dreamed of a love that should bring thee joy! Pardon the excess of my zeal, for lo, again and yet again I swear fidelity! and may all the curses of heaven fall on me if this time I break my vow!”
She bent her head—she would have kissed the floor at his feet, but that he quickly raised her up and prevented her.
“There is nothing more to pardon,” he wrote. “Your wisdom is possibly greater than mine. I know there is nothing stronger than Love, nothing better perhaps; but Love is my foe whom I must vanquish,—lest he should vanquish me!”
And while Zaroba yet pored over these words, her black eyes dilating with amazement at the half confession of weakness implied in them, he turned away and left the room.
That afternoon a pleasant sense of peace and restfulness seemed to settle upon the little household; delicious strains of melody filled the air; Féraz, refreshed in mind and body by a sound sleep, was seated at the piano, improvising strange melodies in his own exquisitely wild and tender fashion; while El-Râmi, seated at his writing-table, indited a long letter to Dr. Kremlin at Ilfracombe, giving in full the message left for him by the mysterious monk from Cyprus respecting the “Third Ray” or signal from Mars.
“Do not weary yourself too much with watching this phenomenon,” he wrote to his friend. “From all accounts, it will be a difficult matter to track so rapid a flash on the Disc as the one indicated, and I have fears for your safety. I cannot give any satisfactory cause for my premonition of danger to you in the attempt, because, if we do not admit an end to anything, then there can be no danger even in death itself, which we are accustomed to look upon as an ‘end,’ when it may be proved to be only a beginning. But, putting aside the idea of ‘danger’ or ‘death,’ the premonition remains in my mind as one of ‘change’ for you; and perhaps you are not ready or willing even to accept a different sphere of action from your present one, therefore I would say, take heed to yourself when you follow the track of the ‘Third Ray.’”
Here his pen stopped abruptly; Féraz was singing in a soft mezza-voce, and he listened: