Part 23 (1/2)

”You promised me: once more!” exclaimed Psyche joyfully.

She threw herself on to his back, she clung to his mane, and he soared aloft.

”Where am I?” said Psyche. ”Who am I? What has happened? And what is going on around me? Am I dead, or do I live? Chimera, how rarefied is the air! how high you ascend! Are you going to ascend higher, higher still? Why is everything so dazzlingly bright about us? Is that water, or air, or light? What strange element is this? Who are going up with us--ethereal faces, ethereal forms? And what is the viol that is playing?

”I heard that once before. Then it sounded plaintively; now it has a joyous sound!

”Chimera, why is the air so full of joy here...? Look! below us is the Kingdom of the Past.

”It lies in a little circle, and the castle is a black dot. Chimera, where are you going so high? We have never been so high before. Chimera, what are those circles all round us, the splendour of which makes me giddy? Are those spheres? Do they get wider and wider? Oh, how wide they get, Chimera, how wide! How high it is here, how wide, how rarefied and how light is the air! I feel myself also so light, so ethereal! Am I dead...? Chimera, look! I have two new wings, and I s.h.i.+ne pearl-white all over. Do I not s.h.i.+ne like a light? It is true I have been very sinful. But I was what I had to be! Is it good to be what we have to be? I do not know, Chimera: I have thought of neither good nor bad; I was only what I was. But tell me, who am I now, and what am I? And where are you taking me to, Chimera? You carry me so quietly, so safely; up and down go your wings, up and down. The stars are twinkling round us; around us whirl the spheres, and wider and wider they become...! How light, how ethereal! What is that I see on the horizon? Or is it not the horizon? Opal islands, aerial oceans.... O Chimera!!!! I see purple sands wrinkling far, far away, and round them foams a golden sea.... We saw that once before, but not as it is now! For then it was delusion, and now...! The sands are growing more distinct; I see the ripple of the golden sea.... Chimera! What land is that? Is that the rainbow? Is that the land of happiness, and are you the king?”

”No, Psyche, I am not a king, and that Land....”

”--And that Land...?”

”Is ... the Kingdom of the Future!”

”The Future! the Future!! O Chimera, where are you taking me to? Will the Future not prove to be a delusion...?”

”No, here is the Future. Here is the Land. Look at it well ... well....”

”It is wider than the widest sphere, wider than anything I can think of. Where are the limits?”

”Nowhere.”

”How far and how wide is the widest sphere?”

”Immeasurably far, indescribably wide....”

”And what stretches away round the widest sphere?”

”The unutterable, and the All, All! The....”