He suffered himself to be led towards the door,—then, all at once he came to an abrupt standstill, and looking round, gazed full on the empty couch where Lilith had so long been royally enshrined. A sudden passion seemed to seize him—his eyes sparkled luridly,—a sort of inward paroxysm convulsed his features, and he clutched Féraz by the shoulder with a grip as hard as steel.
“Roses and lilies and gold!” he muttered thickly—“They were all there, those delicate treasures, those airy nothings of which God makes woman! Roses for the features, lilies for the bosom, gold for the hair!—roses, lilies, and gold! They were mine,—but I have burned them all!—I have burned the roses and lilies, and melted the gold. Dust!—dust and ashes! But the dust is not Lilith. No!—it is only the dust of the roses, the dust of the lilies, the dust of gold. Roses, lilies, and gold! So sweet they are and fair to the sight, one would almost take them for real substance; but they are Shadows!—shadows that pass as we touch them,—shadows that always go, when most we would have them stay!”
He finished with a deep shuddering sigh, and then, loosening his grasp of Féraz, began to stumble his way hurriedly out of the apartment, with the manner of one who is lost in a dense fog and cannot see whither he is going. Féraz hastened to assist and support him, whereupon he looked up with a pathetic and smiling gratefulness.
“You are very good to me,” he said, with a gentle courtesy, which in his condition was peculiarly touching—“I thought I should never need any support;—but I was wrong—quite wrong,—and it is kind of you to help me. My eyes are rather dim,—there was too much light among the roses, ... and I find this place extremely dark, ... it makes me feel a little confused here;”—and he passed his hand across his forehead with a troubled gesture, and looked anxiously at Féraz, as though he would ask him for some explanation of his symptoms.
“Yes, yes!” murmured Féraz soothingly—“You must be tired—you will rest, and presently you will feel strong and well again. Do not hurry,—lean on me,”—and he guided his brother’s trembling limbs carefully down the stairs, a step at a time, thinking within himself in deep sorrow—Could this be the proud El-Râmi, clinging to him thus like a weak old man afraid to move? Oh, what a wreck was here!—what a change had been wrought in the few hours of the past night!—and ever the fateful question returned again and again to trouble him—What had become of Lilith? That she was gone was self-evident,—and he gathered some inkling of the awful truth from his brother’s rambling words. He remembered that El-Râmi had previously declared Lilith to be dead, so far as her body was concerned, and only kept apparently alive by artificial means;—he could easily imagine it possible for those artificial means to lose their efficacy in the end, ... and then, ... for the girl’s beautiful body to crumble into that dissolution which would have been its fate long ago, had Nature had her way. All this he could dimly surmise,—but he had been kept so much in the dark as to the real aim and intention of his brother’s “experiment” that it was not likely he would ever understand everything that had occurred;—so that Lilith’s mysterious evanishment seemed to him like a horrible delusion;—it could not be! he kept on repeating over and over again to himself, and yet it was!
Moving with slow and cautious tread, he got El-Râmi at last into his own study, wondering whether the sight of the familiar objects he was daily accustomed to, would bring him back to a reasonable perception of his surroundings. He waited anxiously, while his brother stood still, shivering slightly and looking about the room with listless, unrecognising eyes. Presently, in a voice that was both weary and petulant, El-Râmi spoke.
“You will not leave me alone, I hope?” he said; “I am very old and feeble, and I have done you no wrong,—I do not see why you should leave me to myself. I should be glad if you would stay with me a little while, because everything is at present so strange to me;—I shall no doubt get more accustomed to it in time. You are perhaps not aware that I wished to live through a great many centuries—and my wish was granted;—I have lived longer than any man, especially since She left me,—and now I am growing old, and I am easily tired. I do not know this place at all—is it a World or a Dream?”
At this question, it seemed to Féraz that he heard again, like a silver clarion ringing through silence, the mysterious voice that had roused him that morning saying, “Awake, Féraz! To-day dreams end, and life begins!” ... He understood, and he bent his head resignedly,—he knew now what the “life” thus indicated meant;—it meant a sacrificing of all his poetic aspirations, his music, and his fantastic happy visions,—a complete immolation of himself and his own desires, for the sake of his brother. His brother, who had once ruled him absolutely, was now to be ruled by him;—helpless as a child, the once self-sufficient and haughty El-Râmi was to be dependent for everything upon the very creature who had lately been his slave,—and Féraz, humbly reading in these reversed circumstances the Divine Law of Compensation, answered his brother’s plaintive query—“Is it a World or a Dream?” with manful tenderness.
“It is a World,”—he said—“not a Dream, beloved El-Râmi—but a Reality. It is a fair garden belonging to God and the things of God”—he paused, seeing that El-Râmi smiled placidly and nodded his head as though he heard pleasant music,—then he went on steadily—“a garden in which immortal spirits wander for a time self-exiled, till they fully realise the worth and loveliness of the higher lands they have forsaken. Do you understand me, O dear and honoured one?—do you understand? None love their home so dearly as those who have left it for a time—and it is only for a time—a short, short time,”—and Féraz, deeply moved by his mingled sorrow and affection, kissed and clasped his brother’s hands—“and all the beauty we see here in this beautiful small world, is made to remind us of the greater beauty yonder. We look, as it were, into a little mirror, which reflects, in exquisite miniature, the face of Heaven! See!”—and he pointed to the brilliant blaze of sunshine that streamed through the window and illumined the whole room—“There is the tiny copy of the larger Light above,—and in that little light the flowers grow, the harvests ripen, the trees bud, the birds sing, and every living creature rejoices,—but in the other Greater Light, God lives, and angels love and have their being;”—here Féraz broke off abruptly, wondering if he might risk the utterance of the words that next rose involuntarily to his lips, while El-Râmi gazed at him with great wide-open eager eyes like those of a child listening to a fairy story.
“Yes, yes!—what next?” he demanded impatiently—“This is good news you give me;—the angels love, you say, and God lives,—yes!—tell me more, ... more!”