A curious expression flitted across Féraz’s face as he heard—and his lips parted in a slight smile, but he said nothing.
“Therefore,”—pursued his brother meditatively—“as I could get no clear exposition of other worlds from you, as I had hoped to do, I knew I had failed to command you in a spiritual sense. But my dominance over your mind continued; it continues still,—nay, my good Féraz!”—this, as Féraz seemed about to utter some impetuous word—“Pray that you may never be able to shake off my force entirely,—for, if you do, you will lose what the people of a grander and poetic day called Genius—and what the miserable Dry-as-Dusts of our modern era call Madness—the only gift of the gods that has ever served to enlighten and purify the world. But your genius, Féraz, belongs to me;—I gave it to you, and I can take it back again if I so choose;—and leave you as you originally were—a handsome animal with no more true conception of art or beauty than my Lord Melthorpe, or his spendthrift young cousin Vaughan.”
Féraz had listened thus far in silence—but now he sprang out of his chair with a reckless gesture.
“I cannot bear it!” he said—“I cannot bear it! El-Râmi, I cannot—I will not!”
“Cannot bear what?” inquired his brother with a touch of satire in his tone—“Pray be calm!—there is no necessity for such melodramatic excitement. Cannot bear what?”
“I will not owe everything to you!” went on Féraz passionately—“How can I endure to know that my very thoughts are not my own, but emanate from you?—that my music has been instilled into me by you?—that you possess me by your power, body and brain,—great Heaven! it is awful—intolerable—impossible!”
El-Râmi rose and laid one hand gently on his shoulder—he recoiled shudderingly—and the elder man sighed heavily.
“You tremble at my touch,—” he said sadly—“the touch of a hand that has never wilfully wrought you harm, but has always striven to make life beautiful to you? Well!—be it so!—you have only to say the word, Féraz, and you shall owe me nothing. I will undo all I have done,—and you shall reassume the existence for which Nature originally made you—an idle voluptuous wasting of time in sensualism and folly. And even that form of life you must owe to Some One,—even that you must account for—to God!”
The young man’s head drooped,—a faint sense of shame stirred in him, but he was still resentful and sullen.
“What have I done to you,” went on El-Râmi, “that you should turn from me thus, all because you have seen a dead woman’s face for an hour? I have made your thoughts harmonious—I have given you pleasure such as the world’s ways cannot give—your mind has been as a clear mirror in which only the fairest visions of life were reflected. You would alter this?—then do so, if you decide thereon,—but weigh the matter well and long, before you shake off my touch, my tenderness, my care.”