Idolatry

At such moments--the happiest life counts but few--angels draw near, but veil their happy eyes. Spirits of evil grind their teeth and frown; and, for one awful instant, perceive their own deformity!

Before yet that dear embrace had lasted an eternity, the man felt the woman shiver in his arms. The celestial heights and spaces dwindled, the angelic music fainted. Heaven rolled back and left them alone on earth. Manetho stood on the threshold between the sphinxes, wearing such a smile as God has never doomed us to see on a child's face!

To few men comes the opportunity of facing in this life those whom they believed they had put out of it. One might expect the palpable assurance of the victim's survival would electrify the fancied murderer. But to Balder's mind, his personal responsibility could not be thus lightened; and any emotion of selfish relief was therefore denied him. On the other hand, such inferences as he had been able to draw from things seen and heard were not to Manetho's advantage. While he could not but rejoice to have been spared actually hurrying a soul from the life of free will to an unchangeable eternity, yet his dominant instinct was to man himself for the hostile issues still to arise. He looked at the being through whom his own life had received so dark a stain with stern, keen eyes.

Gnulemah remained within the circle of her lover's arm. She seemed but little interested in Manetho's appearance, save in so far as he invaded the sanctity of her new immortal privilege. She had never known anxiety on his account; he had never appealed to her feeling for himself. If she loved him, it was with an affection unconscious because untried. She had shivered in Balder's embrace at the moment of the Egyptian's presence, but before having set eyes on him. Had the nearness of his discordant spirit--his familiar face unseen--made her conscious of an evil emanation from him, else unperceived?

Manetho, to do him justice, assumed anything but a hostile attitude. His pleasure at seeing the pair so well affected towards each other was plainly manifested. He clasped his hands together, then extended them with a gesture of benediction and greeting, and came forward. His swarthy face, narrowing from brow to chin, if it could not be frank and hearty, at least expressed a friendliness which it had been ungracious to mistrust.

"Yes, son of Thor, I live! God has been merciful to both of us. Let one who knew your father take your hand. Believe that whatever I have felt for him, I now feel for you,--and more!"