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Page 55
"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!
But Gnulemah, in her mighty earnestness, knelt nearer, so that the
edge of Balder's sunlight smote the golden ornaments that clung round
her outstretched arms. She almost touched him, but though his spirit
recoiled, the doltish flesh would not be moved.
"It was not to be always so," she continued, an appealing vehemence
quivering through her tones. "Some day I was to see Him and know Him
more clearly. Shine on me, Balder! am not I your priestess? in the
morning do not I worship you, and at noon, and in the evening? At
night do not I kneel at your altar and pray you to care for me while I
sleep? Hear me, Balder! I see you in all things,--they are your
thoughts and meet again in you! The sun himself is but your shadow! Do
not I know you, my Balder? Be not clouded from your servant! Leave me
not,--take me with you where you go!"
It was at this moment that the young man's mind, stumbling stupidly
hither and thither, chanced to encounter that picture of the
courtesan, leaning from the open window in the city street, beckoning
him to come. She took Gnulemah's place, beckoning, making a hateful
parody of Gnulemah's expression and gestures. Could a devil take the
consecrated place of angels? or was the angel a worse devil in
disguise? In the same day, to him the same man, could two such voices
speak,--such faces look? And could the germ of Godhead abide in a soul
liable to the irony of such vicarious solicitation?
Speech or motion was still denied him. His priestess, strengthened by
religious passion, was bold to touch with hers his divine hand, on the
finger of which demoniacally glittered the murder-token. The hand was
so cold and lax that even the smooth warmth of her soft fingers failed
to put life in it.
"You have taken Hiero to yourself,--take me also! be my God as well as
his, for I shall be alone now he is gone. This ring which he always
wore--"
Balder roughly snatched back his hand.
"Hiero's ring?"
"Why do you look so?--is it not a sign to me from him?"
"Hiero's ring?--tell me, Gnulemah, is this Hiero's ring?--Stop--stand
up! No--call me Satan!--Hiero's ring!"
"Where is Hiero, then?" demanded Gnulemah, rising and dilating. "You
wear his ring,--what have you done with him?--Is there no God?"
The words came riding on the waves of deep-drawn breaths, for her soul
was in a tumult. Her life had thus far been like a quiet sequestered
pool, reflecting only the sky, and the ferns and flowers that bent
above its margin; ignorant, moreover, of its own depth and nature.
Now, invaded by storm, God and nature seemed swept away and lost, and
a terror of loneliness darkened over it.
"Is there no Balder?" reiterated Gnulemah. But all at once the
fierceness in her eyes melted, as lightning is followed by summer
rain. She came so near,--he standing dulled with horror of his
discovery,--came so near that her breath touched him, and he could
hear the faint rustling of the white byssus on her bosom, and the soft
tinkle of the broad pendants that glowed against her black hair; and
could see how profoundly real her beauty was. Mighty and beneficent
must be the force or the law which could combine the rude elements
into such a form of life as this!
"Let me live for you and serve you! Though the world has no Balder,
may not I have mine? You shall be everything to me! Without you I
cannot be; but I want no other God if I have my Balder!"
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