The body, daily slain by
suffering, is resurrected with a purer flesh, and receives a
reincarnated soul fitted for ideal delights. It has attained a
measure of Nirvana. It anticipates immortality by reason of suffering
and love. Lyone had more than all achieved an ideal existence. Before
she would be able to return again to the realities of the world, it
was necessary that time should be given her for physical and spiritual
invigoration.

"I feel neither pain nor fatigue," said Lyone; "my senses seemed
drowned in a delicious rest. You tell me that I have been dead and
brought to life again, and although I have no sense of having passed
through the agony, I must believe you. I remember touching a golden
vase of flowers in my prison, and then all became a blank until I
stood with the grand sorcerer in the temple of reincarnation."

"That vase you touched," said I, "was connected with a powerful magnic
battery, which was placed in your apartment by the king's order, to
kill you. Grasnagallipas, leader of the king's bockhockids, on
learning of his royal master's treachery, immediately transferred his
allegiance and important command to our army, and was mainly
instrumental in securing the victory."

"So our cause has triumphed," said Lyone; "and what has become of the
king?"

"The king," I replied, "is king no more. I am King of Atvatabar and
you are my beloved queen."

Lyone turned aside her face and wept tears of joy.

"Our marriage," I added, "will inaugurate the reign of a religion of
wedded love, and you will sit with me as queen on the throne of
Atvatabar."

"That will be glorious," said Lyone, "but I fear our marriage will
also end ideal love and sorcery, and the Nirvana of a hundred years,
the fairest products of Egyplosis."

"Do you see now," I said, "that ideal joys in the world can only be
built on more extensive miseries? It would be a glorious thing to
build houses of jewels, but so long as real jewels are so rare, we
must be content with rocks. Still, there are jewels, and in Atvatabar
I learn they are much more abundant than on the outer planet;
therefore it might be proper for twin-souls to walk on love's
enchanted ground for a brief though definite period."

Lyone had undergone transfiguration. Beautiful as a spirit, her figure
seemed plastic porcelain. Death had made more luminous the splendid
sculpture of her face. As she spoke, it seemed to me that we had
closed the door on the infelicitous