Here they ended, and the children began again, not to chant but to sing.. a strange and tristful tune, wilder than any that vragrant winds could play on the strings of an aeolian lyre: "O Virgin of Virgins, Holy Maid, to what shall we resemble thee? Chaste Daughter of the Sun, how shall we praise thy peerless beauty! Thou art the Gate of the House of Stars!--thou art the first of the Seven Jewels of Nagaya! Thou dost wield the sceptre of ebony, and the Eye of Raphon beholds thee with love and contentment! Thou art the Chiefest of Women, ... thou hast the secrets of earth and heaven, thou knowest the dark mysteries! Hail, Lysia! Queen of the Hall of Judgment! Hail, pure Pearl in the Sea of the Sun's glory! Declare unto us, we beseech thee, the Will of Nagaya!"
They closed this canticle softly and slowly, . . then flinging themselves prone, they pressed their faces to the earth, . . and again the glittering Veil waved to and fro suggestively, while Theos, his heart beating fast, watched its shining woof with straining eyes and a sense of suffocation in his throat, . . what ignorant fools, what mad barbarians, what blind blasphemers were these people, he indignantly thought, who could thus patiently hear the praise of an evil woman like Lysia publicly proclaimed with almost divine honors!
Did they actually intend to worship her, he wondered? If so, he at any rate would never bend the knee to one so vile! He might have done so once, perhaps, ... but now ...! At that instant a flute like murmur of melody crept upward as it seemed from the ground, with a plaintive whispering sweetness like the lament of some exiled fairy,--so exquisitely tender and pathetic, and yet withal so heart-stirring and passionate, that, despite himself, he listened with a strange, swooning sense of languor stealing insidiously over him,--a dreamy lassitude, that while it made him feel enervated and deprived of strength, was still not altogether unpleasing, . . a faint sigh escaped his lips,--and he kept his gaze fixed on the Silver Veil as pertinaciously as though behind it lay the mystery of his soul's ruin or salvation.
How the light flashed on its shimmering folds like the rippling phosphorescence on southern seas! ... as green and clear and brilliant as rays reflected from thousands and thousands of glistening emeralds! ... And that haunting, sorrowful, weird music! ... How it seemed to eat into his heart and there waken a bitter remorse combined with an equally bitter despair!
Once more the Veil moved, and this time it appeared to inflate itself in the fashion of a sail caught by a sudden breeze,--then it began to part in the middle very slowly and without sound. Further and further back on each side it gradually receded, and ... like a lily disclosed between folding leaves--a Figure, white, wonderful and angelically fair, shone out, the centre jewel of the stately shrine,--a shrine whose immense carven pillars, grotesque idols, bronze and gold ornaments, jewelled lamps and dazzling embroideries, only served as a sort of neutral-tinted background to intensify with a more lustrous charm the statuesque loveliness revealed! O Lysia, UNvirgined Priestess of the Sun and Nagaya, how gloriously art thou arrayed in sin! ... O singular Sweetness whose end must needs be destruction, was ever woman fairer than thou! ... O love, love, lost in the dead Long-Ago, and drowned in the uttermost darkness of things evil, wilt thou drag my soul with thee again into everlasting night!