She bent her head serenely, and passed onward and upward, and Féraz stood still, his gaze fixed in the direction of that southern light which he now perceived was never still, but quivered as with a million shafts of vari-coloured fire.
“The friends of Lilith!” he repeated to himself—“Angels then,—for she is an Angel.”
Angels!—angels waiting for Lilith in the glory of the South! How long—how long would they wait?—when would Lilith herself appear?—and would the very heavens open to receive her, soaring upward? He trembled,—he tried to realise the unimaginable scene,—and then, ... then he seemed to be seized and hurried away somewhere against his will ... and all that was light grew dark. He shuddered as with icy cold, and felt that earth again encompassed him,—and presently he woke—to find his brother looking at him.
“Why in the world do you go to sleep with the window wide open?” asked El-Râmi—“Here I find you, literally bathed in the moonlight—and moonlight drives men mad, they say,—so fast too in the land of Nod that I could hardly waken you. Shut the window, my dear boy, if you must sleep.”
Féraz sprang up quickly,—his eyes felt dazzled still with the remembrance of that “glory of the angels in the South.”
“I was not asleep,”—he said—“But certainly I was not here.”
“Ah!—In your Star again of course!” murmured El-Râmi with the faintest trace of mockery in his tone. But Féraz took no offence—his one anxiety was to prevent the name of “Lilith” springing to his lips in spite of himself.
“Yes—I was there”—he answered slowly. “And do you know all the people in the land are gathering together by thousands to see an Angel pass heavenward? And there is a glory of her sister-angels, away in the Southern horizon like the splendid circle described by Dante in his Paradiso. Thus—
“‘There is a light in heaven whose goodly shine
Makes the Creator visible to all