"What are the difficulties to be surmounted in your quest of a counterpart soul?" I inquired, with a secret delight.
"The sacrilege of a goddess becoming attached to the individual to the exclusion of all other individuals. The goddess-elect must have been a novitiate and priestess of Egyplosis and the survivor of her counterpart soul. Her experiences as a noble and pure priestess, together with special beauty and popularity, are the conditions for the peerless office of supreme goddess and incarnation of Harikar. By her vows she can never again become the exclusive possession of any one soul. She belongs to Harikar, the universal soul."
"And what is the punishment for renunciation of your office and attachment to another soul?"
"A shameful death by magnicity for the twin-soul. No goddess can resign her office. No goddess can seek a lover and live."
"Not even an ideal affinity?" I asked.
"Why, even ideal affinities who forget themselves are punished with lifelong imprisonment, and their names blotted out of the priesthood as though they were dead," said Lyone.
"Are there many such transgressors of their vows in Egyplosis?" I inquired.
"There are, I believe, some five hundred twin-souls at present immured in the dungeons," said Lyone.
"Poor souls!" I murmured, "their apostasy was but their reformation."
"I often think of them," said Lyone, "but I know I can never liberate them except by my own successful apostasy. And yet when all else is peaceful and happy, or at least appears so, why should I become the leader of an insurrection that would precipitate a hundred times more misery on the nation, to say nothing of the possibility of defeat?"