She turned her face, now spectral and pallid as a waning moon, up to him; her form grew thin and skeleton-like, while still retaining the transparent outline of its beauty; and he realized at last that no creature of flesh and blood was this that clung to him, but some mysterious bodiless horror of the Supernatural, unguessed at by the outer world of men!  The dews of death stood thick on his forehead; there was a straining agony at his heart, and his breath came in quick convulsive gasps; but worse than his physical torture was the overwhelming and convincing truth of the actual existence of the Spiritual Universe, now so suddenly and awfully revealed.  What he had all his life denied was now declared a certainty; where he had been deaf and blind, he now heard and saw.  Ziska!  Ziska-Charmazel!  In very truth he knew he remembered her; in very truth he knew he had loved her; in very truth he knew he had murdered her!  But another still stranger truth was forcing itself upon him now; and this was, that the old love of the old old days was arising within him in all its strength once more, and that he loved her still!  Unreal and terrible as it seemed, it was nevertheless a fact, that as he gazed upon her tortured face, her beautiful anguished eyes, her phantom form, he felt that he would give his own soul to rescue hers and lift her from the coils of vengeance into love again!  Her words awoke vibrating pulsations of thought, long dormant in the innermost recesses of his spirit, which, like so many dagger-thrusts, stabbed him with a myriad recollections; and as a disguising cloak may fall from the figure of a friend in a masquerade, so his present-seeming personality dropped from him and no longer had any substance.  He recognized himself as Araxes—­always the same Soul passing through a myriad changes,—­and all the links of his past and present were suddenly welded together in one unbroken chain, stretching over thousands of years, every link of which he was able to count, mark, and recognize.  By the dreadful light of that dumb comprehension which flashes on all parting souls at the moment of dissolution, he perceived at last that not the Body but the Spirit is the central secret of life,—­not deeds, but thoughts evolve creation.  Death?  That was a name merely; there was no death,—­only a change into some other form of existence.  What change—­what form would be his now?  This thought startled him—­roused him,—­and once again the low spirit-voice of his long-ago betrayed and murdered love thrilled in his ears: 

“Soul of Araxes, cling to my soul!—­for this present life is swiftly passing!  No more scorn of the Divine can stand whither we are speeding, for the Terrible and Eternal Truth overshadows us and our destinies!  Closed are the gates of Heaven,—­open wide are the portals of Hell!  Enter with me, my lover Araxes!—­die as I died, unprepared and alone!  Die, and pass out into new life again--such life as mine—­such torture as mine—­such despair as mine—­ such hate as mine! ...”