She Buildeth Her House

by Will Levington Comfort

Clearly was transferred to hers, the picture in his own brain. One of the ancient and mystic films of memory seemed brought after ages to the light—the reddening sands, the city far behind, from which she had fled to meet her hero, deep in the desert—the glow of sunset on his shoulders and in his hair, tawny as the lion's skin he wore.... The heart quickened within her; the savage ardor of that long-ago woman grew hot in her breast. Strong as a lion he was, this youth of the Sun, and fleet the night fell to cover them. She ate the dried grapes he gave her, drank deep from his skin of wine, and laughed with him in the swift descending night.... She felt his arms now, her face was upraised, her eyelids tensely shut. Downward the blood rushed, leaving her lips icy cold. She felt the muscles of his arms in her tightening fingers, and her breast rose against him. This was no Twentieth Century magician who thralled her now, but a glorious hero out of the desert sunset;—and the woman within her was as one consuming with ecstasy from a lover's last visit....

And now Bellingham changed the color and surface of his advances. It was his thought to make such a marvellous sally, that when he retired and the mistress once again commanded her own citadel, she would perceive the field of his activities strewn, not with corpses, but with garlands, and in their fragrance she must yearn for the giant to come yet again. The thing he now endeavored to do was beyond an ordinary human conception for devilishness; and yet, that it was not a momentary impulse, but a well considered plan, was proven by the trend of his talk of the day before.... The flaw in his structure was his apparent forgetting that the woman in his arms breathing so ardently, in her own mind was clinging to a youth out of the sunset—a youth in the skin of a lion.

"Wisdom has been given to my eyes," Bellingham resumed with surpassing gentleness. "For years a conception of wonderful womanhood has lived and brightened in my mind, bringing with it a promise that in due time, such a woman would be shown to me. The woman, the promise and the miracle of its later meaning, I perceived at last were not for my happiness, but for the world's awful need. You are the fruits of my wonderful vision—you—Paula Linster. You are the quest of my long and weary searching!"

His utterance of her name strangely disturbed her night-rapture of the desert. It was as if she heard afar-off—the calling of her people.

"On the night you entered the Hall," he said, and his face bent closer, "I felt the sense of victory, before these physical eyes found you. My thoughts roved over a world, brightened by a new hope, fairer for your presence. And then, I saw your fine white brow, the ignited magic of your hair and eyes, your frail exquisite shoulders.... It seemed as though the lights perished from the place—when you left."

The word "magic" was a sudden spark around which the thoughts of the woman now groped.... She had lost her desert lover, passion was drained from her, and there was a weight of great trouble pressing down ... "Magic"—she struggled for its meaning.... She was sitting upon a rock again, but not in the desert—rather in a place of cooled sunlight, where there were turf roads and grand, old trees—a huge figure approaching with a powerful swinging stride—yesterday, Bellingham, the Park—the Talk!... Paula lifted her shoulders, felt the binding arms around them and heard the words uttered now in the meridian of human passion:

"Listen, Paula Linster, you have been chosen for the most exalted task ever offered to living woman. The Great Soul is not yet in the world, and He must come soon!... It is you who have inspired this—you, of trained will; a mind of stirring evolution, every thought so essentially feminine; you of virgin body and a soul lit with stars! You are brave. The burden is easy to one of your courage, and I should keep you free from the world—free from the burns and the whips of this thinking animal, the world. All that I have won from the world, her mysteries, her enchantments, I shall give you, all that is big and brave and wise in song and philosophy and nature, I shall bring to your feet, as a hunter with trophies to his beloved—all that a man, wise and tender, can think and express to quicken the splendor of fertility——"

Paula was now fully conscious—her self restored to her. The Yesterday and the To-day rose before her mind in startling parallel. Her primary dread was that she might lose control again before Bellingham was put away. The super-devilishness of his plan—hiding a blasphemy in the white robe of a spiritual consecration—had changed him in her sight to a ravening beast. The thing which he believed would cause her eagerly to bestow upon him the riches of her threefold life had lifted her farther out of his power that moment, than even she realized. Bellingham had over-reached. She was filled with inner nausea.... The idea of escape, the thought of crippling the magician's power over her forever—in the stress of this, she grew cold.... She was nearest the door. It stood ajar, as when she had entered.

"Meditation—in the place I have prepared," he was whispering, "meditation and the poetic life, rarest of fruits, purest of white garments—cleansed with sunlight and starlight, you and I, Paula Linster,—the sources of creation which have been revealed to me—for you! Wonderful woman—all the vitalities of heaven shall play upon you! We shall bring the new god into the world——"

She pushed back from his arms and faced him—white-lipped and loathing.