“Yes.... We shall be but one being.... Utterly.... For already our hearts and souls are one. And we shall become of one mind and one body.
“I am no longer afraid of Sanang Noïane!”
“No longer afraid to slay him?” he asked quietly.
A blue light flashed in her eyes and her face grew still and white and terrible.
“Death to the body? That is nothing, my lord!” she said, in a hard, sweet voice. “It is written that we belong to God and that we return to Him. All living things must die, Heart of the World! It is only the death of souls that matters. And it has arrived at a time in the history of mankind, I think, when the Slayer of Souls shall slay no more.”
She looked at him, flushed, withdrew her hand and went slowly across the room to the big bay window where potted flowers were in bloom.
From a window-box she took a pinch of dry soil and dropped it into the bosom of her gown.
Then, facing the East, with lowered arms and palms turned outward:
“There is no god but God,” she whispered—“the merciful, the long-suffering, the compassionate, the just.
“For it is written that when the heavens are rolled together like a scroll, every soul shall know what it hath wrought.