Idolatry

"What are you?" she asked, her voice sunk to almost a whisper. "Hiero?--are you Hiero?"

Balder stared confounded,--partly inclined to smile!

"Come back,--transfigured!" she went on, her eyes deepening with awe. What did it mean? Somewhat disturbed, Balder got also on his feet. As he did so, Gnulemah crouched before him, holding out her hands like a suppliant. An on-looker might have fancied that the would-be God had found his worshipper at last!

"My name is Balder," his Deityship managed to say. As he spoke, the sun rounded the corner of the house, and the light fell brightly on him, Gnulemah kneeling in shadow. The glory of his splendid youth seemed to have shone out from within him in sudden effulgence.

"Balder!" she slowly repeated, still gazing up at him.

"There is a relationship between us," said he, a vague uneasiness urging him to take refuge behind the quaint fantasy, "You are the daughter of fire, and I the descendant of the sun!"

He spoke the unpremeditated notion which the sunburst had created in his brain,--spoke not seriously nor yet lightly. He had as much right to his genealogy as she to hers.

But what a strange effect his words wrought on her! She clasped her hands together quickly in a kind of ecstasy.

"The sun,--Balder! I have prayed to him,--he as come to me,--Balder, my God!" With how divine an accent did her full low voice give him the name to which he had dared aspire! He was God--and her God!

He perhaps divined one part of the process through which her mind must have gone; but he could not find a word to answer, whether of acceptance or disclaimer. He turned pale,--his heart sick. Had the recognition of his Godhood been too tardy? Gnulemah fancied he repulsed her, and her passion kindled,--only religious passion, but it seared him!

"Do not be cold to me, Balder!"--his name as she uttered it moved him as a blasphemy. "In my lonely kneelings I have felt you! my eyes close, my hands grow together, my breath flutters, every breath is joy and fear! I think 'He is with me,--the Being I adore!' but when I opened my eyes, He was gone,--Balder!"

Still motionless and seeming-deaf stood the Divinity, bathed in mocking sunlight. He was powerless to stop her from unveiling to him, as to a visible God the sacred places of her maiden heart. That sublime office whose reversion he had boldly courted, in the possession shrivelled his soul to nothing and left him dead. It was not easy to be God,--even over one human being!