your own place, and
there you will find one who has awaited your coming for many years.
There the savage woman whom you mated with, the princess of a fallen
house, will become but a fantastic memory to you, and all these strange
eventful years will be as a midnight dream. Only your love for the dead
children will always remain, these you must always love by day and by
night, and the desire of them, that desire for the dead than which there
is nothing more terrible, shall follow you to your grave, and I am glad
that it should be so, for I was their mother and some thought of me must
go with them. This alone the Lily maid has left to me, and there only
I shall prevail against her, for, Teule, no child of hers shall live to
rob your heart of the memory of those I gave you.

'Oh! I have watched you by day and by night: I have seen the longing in
your eyes for a face which you have lost and for the land of your youth.
Be happy, you shall gain both, for the struggle is ended and the Lily
maid has been too strong for me. I grow weak and I have little more to
say. We part, and perhaps for ever, for what is there between us save
the souls of those dead sons of ours? Since you desire me no more, that
I may make our severance perfect, now in the hour of my death I renounce
your gods and I seek my own, though I think that I love yours and hate
those of my people. Is there any communion between them? We part, and
perchance for ever, yet I pray of you to think of me kindly, for I have
loved you and I love you; I was the mother of your children, whom being
Christian, you will meet again. I love you now and for always. I am
glad to have lived because you kissed me on the stone of sacrifice, and
afterwards I bore you sons. They are yours and not mine; it seems to me
now that I only cared for them because they were yours, and they
loved you and not me. Take them--take their spirits as you have taken
everything. You swore that death alone should sever us, and you have
kept your oath in the letter and in the thought. But now I go to the
Houses of the Sun to seek my own people, and to you, Teule, with whom
I have lived many years and seen much sorrow, but whom I will no longer
call husband, since you forbade me so to do, I say, make no mock of
me to the Lily maid. Speak of me to her as little as you may--be happy
and--farewell!'

Now as she spoke ever more faintly, and I listened bewildered, the light
of dawn grew slowly in the chamber.