geable and the immortal.

The real with its disappointments is soul shattering, but
the ideal is perennial life.

The more inaccessible the pleasure, the keener the delight
in its pursuit.

In love, accessibility is death.

PRIESTESSES.

By losing the real we obtain the ideal. What others strive
for we possess. Praise to Harikar for the most glorious of
men, for precious viands, odoriferous wines, rare and costly
jewels, marvellous stuffs, and the hundred temples and
gardens of Egyplosis! Praise to Harikar for our counterpart
souls!

PRIESTS.

Praise to Harikar for the loveliest of women, noble,
cultured and tender, with whom Nirvana is ecstasy.

PRIESTESSES.

Nirvana is the consummate gift of Harikar, the one
everlasting sweetness!

* * * * *

During the intonation of the ritual, the twin-souls put into practice
the manifestations of those endearments prayed for, and which they
certainly seemed to possess.

Throughout the entire congregation, priest and priestess, enfolded in
each other's arms, swayed caressingly together and rapturously kissed
each other. The fondest sighs were heard amid the recitations, and the
faces of lover and beloved were flushed the color of rosy flame. A
tempest of restrained passion shook the entire congregation.

What wonder, that, ruled by such a faith, each twin-soul splendidly
apparelled, in such an edifice, should grow rich and strange, bold and
delicate, and exhibit the intemperance of emotion excited by
sensations so multiplied and extreme? I then saw a new meaning in the
grandeur and efflorescence of the sculptures of the temple. I saw in
the profuse decorations, in the arabesques so fantastically entangled
and unrolled, a manifestation of the delicate sensibility that created
them.

Not only were real or natural objects idealized in art, but also
conventional art, or the record of what nature suggests, as well as
how she appears, to the soul of the artist. And what must have been
the infinite wealth of suggestion to such souls as these to account
for such mouldings and traceries on wall and roof, and such wealth of
color in attire, reflected and duplicated in the jewelled windows of
the dome. Here were souls fitted by nature and art to fuse and create
the suggestions of nature into shap