LITERATURE. 8i 



" Uost thou leniciubcr," conUiiucd Atah. " what hiippened in tlu- dL'striiction of the 

 legion of traitors wliom thou hast burned alive? I do not think thou even perceivedst it 

 or ever heard anything about it ; " and Atah gave an account of the escape of Paouri, of his 

 fall into the lake, and of the scourge which his corpse had been to the unfortunate land. 

 She spoke of the desolation of the country, of the destitution of our forefathers, and implored 

 War to do what he could in justice to the harmony of the universe, and for her own sake and 

 pleasure, our country lying under her watchfulness, and her long night of expectation having 

 been disturl)..! Iiy the piercing lamentations of the unfortunate iniiabitants of the land. 



Having heard the account of what had happened, which had never before reached his 

 ears. War was only too glad to promise to do all in his power to set matters right, and to 

 recompense in a God -like manner the hind and its poor popuhition who had suffered so much 

 at the hands of fatality. 



As soon as he had learned all the facts, he left Atali, promising to come back as soon as 

 he could to give her an account of what he should have been able to do for the land. 



Days and nights passed away, but not one of them now could have the slightest tinge 

 of dreariness for Atah. Henceforth her life was one of enchantment, delight, and activity; 

 she attended wuth devotion and tenderness to the wants of everything placed within her sphere 

 which needed help, comfort, or support, and all ielt her influence, so that soon after the 

 departure of War, there prevailed such a delicious harmony as had never existed before, 

 and Atah waited for his return, listening to the concert of constellations celebrating the 

 glory of War, his courage, his exploits, his indomitable and unbounded energy, but particu- 

 larly his kindness and his sublime and beneficent sense of pity, which they so called because 

 they could only realise that manifestation of love, and had not risen high enough into 

 consciousness to understand the divine nature of War. They knew only of his strengtli, 

 his omnipotence, of his sweet and fecund generosity, and ignored altogether that the whole 

 of it was propelled from the depths of his heart by the force of unfathomable love without 

 which there can be no God. 



One morning Atah was balancing in her orb , she was dreamy, and now and then the 

 twinkling of her blue eyes, though half wrapped in sleep, was such that every one felt that in 

 her repose she was thinking, seeing ; the deep and mysterious sparkle of her black pupil threw 

 from under her half-open lids darts which passed like meteors through space, pure reflections 

 of the glory of her love. She was thus between watchfulness and sleep, in the void of calm, 

 looking without the help of her eyes into the coming future, approaching from the distance, 

 unrolling and reforming its involutes as the ocean spreads and recontracts its clear and 

 superb waves of emerald and lapis lazuli, before breaking at last on the white sandy beach, 

 on the soft bed of the waiting shore, in a magnificent explosion of pearls — pearls vanishing 

 like a dream, but a dream which has been — perchance, with the swiftness of meditation, but 

 a meditation melting as soon as it appears into the gorgeousness of light and eternity. 



She was there waiting, pervaded w-ith the sweet consciousness that War would come 

 back and expecting him every instant ; and her intuitive surmise was soon realised in its 

 fulness. Earlier than usual the sky became coloured with the most delightful tints, in which 

 were to be found, mingled with the pure white light, the tenderest of pinks and the less metallic 

 of the bright yellows. Dancing in the atmosphere, vibrating in the morning light, were seen 

 radiating in a constantly increasing circle all the shining points of the darts and spears thrown 

 as forerunners from the mane of the approaching God, as sharp as rods of lightning interming- 

 ling with their zig-zags. 



^Millions of radii were elongating, spreading themselves and scattering ever larger and 

 longer waves, just as we see when we drop a stone into a pool of sleeping water, but with 

 this difference — that instead of being produced on a plane surface the waves were developing 

 in a spheric movement and expanding in infinitude in a manner which has nothing terrestrial, 

 and which in my ignorance I cannot better illustrate than by comparing to the explosion of a 

 bombshell. 



