eavy golden bracelet is cold, yet soft
and yielding like a sleep. The face has the natural ease of slumber, and
not the rigid artificiality of death. 'Tis true there is no pulse, no
beat of heart nor stir of breath, yet neither is there the sombre
grotesqueness of the last pose. But the difference between life and
death is here so small that it is incommensurable, the point of the
mathematicians only. I shall hold this little hand in mine, and, with a
hand upon her forehead, call her by name; for, you know, Akron, one's
name has a power beyond every other word to reach the closed ears of the
imprisoned soul.

Pantheia! Pantheia! Pantheia! It is dawn. Your father calls you. Your
mother calls you. And I call you and command you. Open your eyes and
behold the sun!

_Akron_

A miracle, oh, Zeus! The eyelids tremble like flower-petals under the
wind of heaven. Was that a sigh or the swish of wings? Oh, wonder of
wonders! she breathes--she whispers!

_Pantheia_

Where am I? Is this death? Some one called my name. That is the pictured
ceiling of my own room. Surely that is Zaldu, my pet slave, with big
drops on her black face.... And father, mother, kneeling either side.
And who are you with rapt face and star-deep eyes, thick hair with
Delphic wreaths, and in purple gown and golden girdle? Are you a god?

_Empedocles_

Be tranquil, child, I am no god, only a physician come to heal you. You
have been ill and sleeping a long time.

_Pantheia_

Yes, I feel weakness, hunger, and thirst. I remember now that I was
well, when suddenly a strange thought came to me on my pillow. I
thought that I was dead. This took such possession of me that it shut
out every other thought, and being able to think only that one thought,
I must have been dead. It seemed but a moment's time when the spell of
the thought was broken by an alien deep voice from the void of nothing
about me, calling me by name, calling me to wake and see the day. With
that came floods of my own old thoughts, like molten streams from AEtna,
that were rigid as granite before the word was given that loosed them.

_Empedocles_

Did you not see new things or new lands or old dead faces, for you have
been gone a month? I am curious to know.

_Pantheia_

How passing strange! No, I saw neither darkness nor light. I heard no
sounds, nor was conscious of any silence. I must have had just the one
thought that I was dead, but I lost consciousness of that thought. I
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