“Surely you do not think it well for your brother to have lost the control of his brilliant intellectual faculties?” asked Sir Frederick, surprised.
“I think everything well that God designs”—answered Féraz gently, now giving the flowers he had gathered, to Irene and Lady Vaughan, and looking, as he stood in his white robes against a background of rosy sunset-light, like a glorified young saint in a picture,—“El-Râmi’s intellectual faculties were far too brilliant, too keen, too dominant,—his great force and supremacy of will too absolute. With such powers as he had he would have ruled this world, and lost the next. That is, he would have gained the Shadow and missed the Substance. No, no—it is best as it is. ‘Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven!’ That is a true saying. In the Valley of Humiliation the birds of paradise sing, and in El-Râmi’s earth-darkness there are gleams of the Light Divine. I am content,—and so, I firmly and devoutly believe, is he.”
With this, and a few more parting words, the visitors now prepared to take their leave. Suddenly Irene Vassilius perceived an exquisite rose hanging down among the vines that clambered about the walls of the little monastery;—a rose pure white in its outer petals but tenderly tinted with a pale blush pink towards its centre. Acting on her own impulsive idea, she gathered it, and hastened back alone across the quadrangle to where El-Râmi sat absorbed and lost in his own drowsy dreams.
“Good-bye, dear friend,—good-bye!” she said softly, and held the fragrant beautiful bud towards him.
He opened his sad dark eyes and smiled,—then extended his hand and took the flower.
“I thank you, little messenger of peace!” he said—“It is a rose from Heaven,—it is the Soul of Lilith!”
[FINIS]
FOOTNOTES.
[1] From The Natural Law of Miracles, written in Arabic 400 B.C.
[2] This remarkable passage on the admitted effects of hypnotism as practised by the priests of ancient Egypt will be found in an old history of the building of the Pyramids entitled—“The Egyptian Account of the Pyramids”—Written in the Arabic by Murtadi the son of Gaphiphus—date about 1400.