“Oh, but I am not the same Diana May!” she answered. “You have altered all that. I was old, and a woman,—now I am young, and a goddess!”
He started back, amazed at her voice and attitude.
“A goddess—a goddess!” she repeated, triumphantly. “Young with a youth that shall not change—alive with a life that shall not die! Out of the fire and the air I have absorbed the essence of all beauty and power!—what shall trouble me? Not the things of this little querulous world!—not its peevish men and women!—I am above them all! Féodor Dimitrius, your science has gathered strange fruit from the Tree of Life, but remember!—the Flaming Sword turns every way!”
He gazed at her in speechless wonderment. She had spoken with extraordinary force and passion, and now stood confronting him as an angel might have stood in the Garden of Paradise. Her beauty was overwhelming—almost maddening in its irresistible attraction, and his brain whirled like a mote in a ring of fire. He stretched out his hands appealingly:
“Diana!” he half whispered—“Diana, you are mine!—my sole creation!”
“Not so,” she replied. “You blaspheme! Nothing is yours. You have used the forces of Nature to make me what I am,—but I am Nature’s product, and Nature is not always kind! Let us go!”
She moved towards the door. Vasho stood ready to open it, his eyes cast down, and his limbs trembling,—as she approached she smiled kindly at him, but the poor negro was too scared to look at her. He swung the portal upward, and she passed through the opening. Dimitrius followed, not venturing to offer his hand a second time. He merely gave instructions to Vasho to set the laboratory in order and remove every trace of his “experiment,”—then kept close beside the erect, slight, graceful figure in the shining garment that glided along with unerring steps through the corridor into the familiar hall, where for a moment, Diana paused.
“Is your mother well?” she asked.
“Quite well.”
“I am glad. You will prepare her to see me to-morrow?”