“O narrow jurisdiction! ...  O short-sighted, false equity!” he exclaimed passionately.  “Are there different laws for high and low? ...  Must the weak and defenceless be condemned to death for the self-same sin committed openly by their more powerful brethren who yet escape scot-free?  What of the High Priestess then? ...  If these poor lover-victims merited their doom, why is not Lysia slain? ...  Is not she a willingly violated vestal? ... doth she not count her lovers by the score? ... are not her vows long since broken? ... is not her life a life of wanton luxury and open shame? ...  Why doth the Law, beholding these things, remain in her case dumb and ineffectual?”

“Hush, hush, my son!” said the aged Zuriel anxiously—­“These stone walls hear thee far too loudly,—­who knows but they may echo forth thy words to unsuspected listeners!  Peace—­peace! ...  Lysia is as much Queen, as Zephoranim is King of Al-Kyris; and surely thou knowest that the sins of tyrants are accounted virtues, so long as they retain their ruling powers?  The public voice pronounces Lysia chaste, and Zephoranim faithful; who then shall dare to disprove the verdict?—­’Tis the same in all countries, near and far,—­the law serves the strong, while professing to defend the weak.  The rich man gains his cause,—­the beggar loses it,—­how can it be otherwise, while lust of gold prevails?  Gold is the moving-force of this our era,—­without it kings and ministers are impotent, and armies starve, . . with it, all things can be accomplished even to the concealment of the foulest crimes.  Come, come! ...” and he laid one hand kindly on Theos’s arm, “Thou hast a generous and fiery spirit, but thou shouldst never have been born into this planet if thou seekest such a thing as Justice!  No man will ever deal true justice to his fellow man on earth, unless perhaps in ages to come, when the old creeds are swept away for a new, and a grander, wider, purer form of faith is accepted by the people.  For religion in Al-Kyris to-day is a hollow mockery,—­a sham, kept up partly from fear,—­partly from motives of policy,—­but every thinker is an atheist at heart, . . our splendid civilization is tottering towards its fall, . . and should the fore-doomed destruction of this city come to pass, vast ages of progress, discovery, and invention will be swept away as though they had never been!”

He paused and sighed,—­then continued sorrowfully—­“There is, there must be something wrong in the mechanism of life,—­some little hitch that stops the even wheels,—­some curious perpetual mischance that crosses us at every turn,—­but I doubt not all is for the best, and will prove most truly so hereafter!”

“Hereafter!” echoes Theos bitterly ...  “Thinkest thou that even God, repenting of the evil He hath done, will ever be able to compensate us by any future bliss, for all the needless anguish of the Present?”

Zuriel looked at him with a strange, almost spectral expression of mingled pity, fear, and misgiving, but he offered no reply to this home-thrust of a question.  In grave silence and with slow, majestic tread he began to lead the way along through the dismal labyrinth of black, winding arches, holding his blue lamp aloft as he went, the better to lighten the dense gloom.