And the invocation was heard,—­the bondage of sense was rent away from the visual mind.  He looked, and saw,—­no, not the being he had called, with its limbs of light and unutterably tranquil smile—­not his familiar, Adon-Ai, the Son of Glory and the Star, but the Evil Omen, the dark Chimera, the implacable Foe, with exultation and malice burning in its hell-lit eyes.  The Spectre, no longer cowering and retreating into shadow, rose before him, gigantic and erect; the face, whose veil no mortal hand had ever raised, was still concealed, but the form was more distinct, corporeal, and cast from it, as an atmosphere, horror and rage and awe.  As an iceberg, the breath of that presence froze the air; as a cloud, it filled the chamber and blackened the stars from heaven.

“Lo!” said its voice, “I am here once more.  Thou hast robbed me of a meaner prey.  Now exorcise thyself from my power!  Thy life has left thee, to live in the heart of a daughter of the charnel and the worm.  In that life I come to thee with my inexorable tread.  Thou art returned to the Threshold,—­thou, whose steps have trodden the verges of the Infinite!  And as the goblin of its fantasy seizes on a child in the dark,—­mighty one, who wouldst conquer Death,—­I seize on thee!”

“Back to thy thraldom, slave!  If thou art come to the voice that called thee not, it is again not to command, but to obey!  Thou, from whose whisper I gained the boons of the lives lovelier and dearer than my own; thou—­I command thee, not by spell and charm, but by the force of a soul mightier than the malice of thy being,—­thou serve me yet, and speak again the secret that can rescue the lives thou hast, by permission of the Universal Master, permitted me to retain awhile in the temple of the clay!”

Brighter and more devouringly burned the glare from those lurid eyes; more visible and colossal yet rose the dilating shape; a yet fiercer and more disdainful hate spoke in the voice that answered, “Didst thou think that my boon would be other than thy curse?  Happy for thee hadst thou mourned over the deaths which come by the gentle hand of Nature,—­hadst thou never known how the name of mother consecrates the face of Beauty, and never, bending over thy first-born, felt the imperishable sweetness of a father’s love!  They are saved, for what?—­the mother, for the death of violence and shame and blood, for the doomsman’s hand to put aside that shining hair which has entangled thy bridegroom kisses; the child, first and last of thine offspring, in whom thou didst hope to found a race that should hear with thee the music of celestial harps, and float, by the side of thy familiar, Adon-Ai, through the azure rivers of joy,—­the child, to live on a few days as a fungus in a burial-vault, a thing of the loathsome dungeon, dying of cruelty and neglect and famine.  Ha! ha! thou who wouldst baffle Death, learn how the deathless die if they dare to love the mortal.  Now, Chaldean, behold my boons!  Now I seize and wrap thee with the pestilence of my presence; now, evermore, till thy long race is run, mine eyes shall glow into thy brain, and mine arms shall clasp thee, when thou wouldst take the wings of the Morning and flee from the embrace of Night!”