Yet is our love none the less—­rather, it seems every day greater, for our bodies can feel joy and sorrow, even as our spirits do; so that I am able to suffer for you, in which I rejoice, and I would that I might be chosen to lay down my life for you, that you might know how I love you; for often you doubt me, and sometimes you doubt yourself.  There should be no doubt in love.  Love is from the first, and will be to the end, and beyond the end; love is so eternal, so great, so whole, that this mortal life of ours is but as a tiny instant, a moment of pausing in our journey from one star-world to another along the endless paths of heavenly glory we shall tread, together—­it is nothing, this worldly life of ours.  Before it shall seem long that we have loved, this earth we stand on, these things we touch, these bodies of ours that we think so strong and fair, will be forgotten and dissolved into their elements in the trackless and undiscoverable waste of past mortality, while we ourselves are ever young, and ever fair, and for ever living in our immortal love.”

Nehushta looked up wonderingly into her lover’s eyes, then let her head rest on his shoulder.  The high daring of his thoughts seemed ever trying to scale heaven itself, seeking to draw her to some wondrous region of mystic beauty and strange spirit life.  She was awed for a moment, then she, too, spoke in her own fashion.

“I love life,” she said, “I love you because you live, not because you are a spirit chained and tied down for a time.  I love this soft sweet earth, the dawn of it, and the twilight of it; I love the sun in his rising and in his setting; I love the moon in her fulness and in her waning; I love the smell of the box and of the myrtle, of the roses and of the violets; I love the glorious light of day, the splendour of heat and greenness, the song of the birds of the air and the song of the labourer in the field, the hum of the locust, and the soft buzzing of the bee; I love the brightness of gold and the richness of fine purple, the tramp of your splendid guards and the ring of their trumpets clanging in the fresh morning, as they march through the marble courts of the palace.  I love the gloom of night for its softness, the song of the nightingale in the ivory moonlight, the rustle of the breeze in the dark rose-thickets, and the odour of the sleeping flowers in my gardens; I love even the cry of the owl from the prophet’s tower, and the soft thick sound of the bat’s wings, as he flits past the netting of my window.  I love it all, for the whole earth is rich and young and good to touch, and most sweet to live in.  And I love you because you are more beautiful than other men, fairer and stronger and braver, and because you love me, and will let no other love me but yourself, if you were to die for it.  Ah, my beloved, I would that I had all the sweet voices of the earth, all the tuneful tongues of the air, to tell you how I love you!”

“There is no lack of sweetness, nor of eloquence, my princess,” said Zoroaster; “there is no need of any voice sweeter than yours, nor of any tongue more tuneful.  You love in your way, I in mine; the two together must surely be the perfect whole.  Is it not so?  Nay—­seal the deed once again—­and again—­so!  ‘Love is stronger than death,’ says your preacher.”