“Everything!” replied Ziska, the vindictive demon light in her eyes blazing with a truly frightful intensity.  “Inasmuch as ye are one and the same!  The same dark soul of sin—­unpurged, uncleansed through ages of eternal fire!  Sensualist!  Voluptuary!  Accursed spirit of the man I loved, come forth from the present Seeming-of-things!  Come forth and cling to me!  Cling!—­for the whole forces of a million universes shall not separate us!  O Eternal Spirits of the Dead!” and she lifted her ghostly white arms with a wild gesture.  “Rend ye the veil!  Declare to the infidel and unbeliever the truth of the life beyond death; the life wherein ye and I dwell and work, clamoring for late justice!”

Here she sprang forward and caught the arm of Gervase with all the fierce eagerness of some ravenous bird of prey; and as she did so he knew her grasp meant death.

“Remember the days of old, Araxes!  Look back, look back from the present to the past, and remember the crimes that are still unavenged!  Remember the love sought and won!—­remember the broken heart!—­remember the ruined life!  Remember the triumphs of war!—­ the glories of conquest!  Remember the lust of ambition!—­the treachery!—­the slaughter!—­the blasphemies against high Heaven!  Remember the night of the Feast of Osiris—­the Feast of the Sun!  Remember how Ziska-Charmazel awaited her lover, singing alone for joy, in blind faith and blinder love, his favorite song of the Lotus-Lily!  The moon was high, as it is now!—­the stars glittered above the Pyramids, as they glitter now!—­in the palace there was the sound of music and triumph and laughter, and a whisper on the air of the fickle heart and changeful mood of Araxes; of another face which charmed him, though less fair than that of Ziska-Charmazel!  Remember, remember!” and she clung closer and closer as he staggered backward half suffocated by his own emotions and the horror of her touch.  “Remember the fierce word!—­the quick and murderous blow!—­the plunge of the jewelled knife up to the hilt in the passionate white bosom of Charmazel!—­the lonely anguish in which she died!  Died,—­but to live again and pursue her murderer!- -to track him down to his grave wherein the king strewed gold, and devils strewed curses!—­down, down to the end of all his glory and conquest into the silence of yon gold-encrusted clay!  And out of silence again into sound and light and fire, ever pursuing, I have followed—­followed through a thousand phases of existence!—­and I will follow still through limitless space and endless time, till the great Maker of this terrible wheel of life Himself shall say, ‘Stop!  Here ends even the law of vengeance!’ Oh, for ten thousand centuries more in which to work my passion and prove my wrong!  All the treasure of love despised!—­all the hope of a life betrayed!—­ all the salvation of heaven denied!  Tremble, Soul of Araxes!—­for hate is eternal, as love is eternal!—­the veil is down, and Memory stings!”