“But think you, Amine, that those who are not of this world have feelings of kindness, gratitude, and ill-will, as we have?  Can they be made subservient?”

“Most surely so.  If they have ill-will, as we know they have, they must also be endowed with the better feelings.  Why are there good and evil intelligences?  They may have disencumbered themselves of their mortal clay, but the soul must be the same.  A soul without feeling were no soul at all.  The soul is active in this world and must be so in the next.  If angels can pity, they must feel like us.  If demons can vex, they must feel like us.  Our feelings change, then why not theirs?  Without feelings, there were no heaven, no hell.  Here our souls are confined, cribbed, and overladen, borne down by the heavy flesh by which they are, for the time, polluted; but the soul that has winged its flight from clay is, I think, not one jot more pure, more bright, or more perfect than those within ourselves.  Can they be made subservient, say you!  Yes! they can; they can be forced, when mortals possess the means and power.  The evil-inclined may be forced to good, as well as to evil.  It is not the good and perfect spirits that we subject by art, but those that are inclined to wrong.  It is over them that mortals have the power.  Our arts have no power over the perfect spirits, but over those which are ever working evil, and which are bound to obey and do good, if those who master them require it.”

“You still resort to forbidden arts, Amine.  Is that right?”

“Right!  If we have power given to us, it is right to use it.”

“Yes, most certainly, for good—­but not for evil.”

“Mortals in power, possessing nothing but what is mundane, are answerable for the use of that power; so those gifted by superior means, are answerable as they employ those means.  Does the God above make a flower to grow, intending that it should not be gathered?  No! neither does He allow supernatural aid to be given, if He did not intend that mortals should avail themselves of it.”

As Amine’s eyes beamed upon Philip’s, he could not for the moment subdue the idea rising in his mind, that she was not like other mortals, and he calmly observed, “Am I sure, Amine, that I am wedded to one mortal as myself?”

“Yes! yes!  Philip, compose yourself, I am but mortal; would to Heaven I were not.  Would to Heaven I were one of those who could hover over you, watch you in all your perils, save and protect you in this your mad career; but I am but a poor weak woman, whose heart beats fondly, devotedly for you—­who, for you, would dare all and everything—­who, changed in her nature, has become courageous and daring from her love; and who rejects all creeds which would prevent her from calling upon heaven, or earth, or hell, to assist her in retaining with her her soul’s existence?”

“Nay! nay!  Amine, say not you reject the creed.  Does not this,”—­and Philip pulled from his bosom the holy relic, “does not this, and the message sent by it, prove our creed is true?”