THE SIBYL.

     What answer, O Nin-ki-gal? 
     What answer, O Nin-ki-gal? 
     Have pity, O Queen of Queens!

NIN-KI-GAL

       Life’s fountain flows,
     And still the drink is Death’s;
       Life’s garden blows,
     And still ’tis Ashtoreth’s; [Footnote]
       But all is Nin-ki-gal’s. 
     I lent the drink of Day
       To man and beast;
     I lent the drink of Day
       To gods for feast;
     I poured the river of Night
       On gods surceased: 
     Their blood was Nin-ki-gal’s.

[Footnote:  Hathor.]

THE SIBYL.

     What sowest thou, Nin-ki-gal? 
     What growest thou, Nin-ki-gal? 
     Have pity, O Queen of Queens!

NIN-KI-GAL.

       Life-seeds I sow—­
     To reap the numbered breaths;
       Fair flowers I grow—­
     And hers, red Ashtoreth’s;
       Yea, all are Nin-ki-gal’s!

THE SIBYL.

     What knowest thou, Nin-ki-gal? 
     What showest thou, Nin-ki-gal? 
     Have pity, O Queen of Queens!

NIN-KI-GAL.

       Nor king nor slave I know,
     Nor tribes, nor shibboleths;
       But Life-in-Death I know—­
     Yea, Nin-ki-gal I know—­
       Life’s Queen and Death’s.

And what was the effect upon me of these communings with the ancestors whose superstitions I have, perhaps, been throughout this narrative treating in a spirit that hardly becomes their descendant?

The best and briefest way of answering this question is to confess not what I thought, as I went on studying my father’s book, its strange theories and revelations, but what I did.  I read the book all day long:  I read it all the next day.  I cannot say what days passed.  One night I resumed my wanderings in the streets for an hour or two, and then returned home and went to bed,—­but not to sleep.  For me there was no more sleep till those ancestral voices could be quelled—­till that sound of Winnie’s song in the street could be stopped in my ears.  For very relief from them I again leapt out of bed, lit a candle, unlocked the cabinet, and taking out the amulet, proceeded to examine the I facets as I did once before when I heard in the Swiss cottage these words of my stricken father:—­

’Should you ever come to love as I have loved, you will find that materialism is intolerable—­is hell itself—­to the heart that has known a passion like mine.  You will find that it is madness, Hal, madness, to believe in the word “never”!  You will find that you dare not leave untried any creed, howsoever wild, that offers the heart a ray of hope.’

And then while the candle burnt out dead in the socket I sat in a waking dream.

III