"After her tremendous experiences, the queen will require a season of absolute rest to restore her to perfect health. I will intrust the task of establishing a reform of Egyplosis in competent hands, assisted by a council of your own representatives. The present crisis is too overwhelmingly happy to permit me to say more to you. On another occasion I will thank you more effectively."
This speech was received with enthusiastic applause.
On a litter, supported by six twin-souls, Lyone was tenderly borne out of the temple. We departed amid joyful peans of music, our pathway being strewn with flowers. We reached the supernal palace, and saw from every roof floating the flag of Lyone, in token of our victory.
In her palace, on a couch of pale green velvet, lay the reincarnated form of Lyone, filled with a sense of luxurious rest. The experiences of the past few days demanded a period of profound repose. Her face wore a blessed and triumphant smile. She had paid with suffering for that Nirvana of joy. With reincarnation, or rather resurrection, had come a holier transfiguration of form and face. She was still too weak physically to discuss at length the great changes that had come to her or to the history of Atvatabar.
She was the symbol of the more sensitive souls of humanity, who, capable of intense suffering and delirious rapture, must needs purchase all their joys with heart-rending experiences. The culture that comes from agony is our most priceless possession, and brings the soul to every feast, as well as the body. 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."