A deep sigh, that was half a groan, broke from his lips, ... he could now take the measurement of his own utter littleness and incompetency!  He could create nothing new!  Everything he had written, as he fancied only just lately, had been written by himself before!  The problem of the poem “Nourhalma” ... was explained, ... he had designed it when he had played his part on the stage of life as Sah-luma,—­and perhaps not even then for the first time!  In this pride-crushing knowledge there was only one consolation, ... namely, that if his Dream was a true reflection of his Past, and exact in details as he felt it must be, then “Nourhalma,” had not been given to Al-Kyris, ... it had been composed, but not made public.  Hence, so far, it was new to the world, though not new to himself.  Yet he had considered it wondrously new! a “perfectly original” idea! ...  Ah! who dares to boast of any idea as humanly “original” ... seeing that all ideas whatsoever must be referred back to God and admitted as His and His only!  What is the wisest man that ever lived, but a small, pale, ill-reflecting mirror of the Eternal Thought that controls and dominates all things! ...  He remembered with conscience-stricken confusion what pleasure he had felt, what placid satisfaction, what unqualified admiration, when listening to his own works recited by the ghost-presentment of his Former Self! ... pleasure that had certainly exceeded whatever pain he had suffered by the then enigmatical and perplexing nature of the incident.  O what a foolish Atom he now seemed, viewed by the standard of his newly aroused higher consciousness! ... how poor and passive a slave to the glittering, beckoning Phantasm of his own perishable Fame!

Thus on the Field of Ardath he drained the cup of humility to the dregs,—­the cup which like that offered to the Prophet of Holy Writ was “full as it were with water, but the color of it was like fire”—­the water of tears.. the fire of faith, . . and with that prophet he might have said..  “When I had drunk of it, my heart uttered understanding, and wisdom grew in my breast, for my spirit strengthened my memory.”

Meanwhile Edris, still keeping her gentle hands on his bent head, went on: 

“In such wise didst thou, my Beloved, as the famous Sah-luma, mournfully perish.. and the nations remembered thee no more!  But thy spiritual, indestructible Essence lived on, and wandered dismayed and forlorn through a myriad forms of existence in the depths of Perpetual Darkness which must be, even as the Everlasting Light is.  Thy immortal but perverted Will bore thee always further from God, . . further from Him, and so far from me, that thou wert at times beyond even an Angel’s ken!  Ages upon ages rolled away, . . the centuries between Earth and Earths purposed redemption passed, ... and, . . though in Heaven these measured spaces of time that appear so great to men are as a mere world’s month of