12H.P. Blavatsky & M. Collins, editors - Lucifer Vol. II, No. 12 August, 1888

law of life have decreed this. W e have not looked for the pleasure for ourselves. It has come to us. W hy not take it without question, as the flowers take the sunshine ? ” He drew a step nearer to her, and this one step seemed to break the spell that held F le ta ; it was more than she could endure. With a wild shriek she sprang to her feet. “ Go, d e v il! ” she cried out. “ I am stronger than you, subtle though you are ! ” C H A P T E R X X X IV .

H ow dark— how dull, and quiet, and still!

Fleta woke to this consciousness and to nothing more. A ll life, and fire, and hope, seemed to have left the world. And why ? That was what she asked herself the moment she awoke. But before she could attempt to answer the question she wondered from what she hac awakened. It had not been sleep. What sort of unconsciousness had it been ?

A moment later and a full knowledge of it all came to her.

She was like a person who has seen death suddenly, and been deprived by death of the one beloved creature in all the world. Yes, that was the meaning of this unutterable pain.

She looked back and saw herself— how long ago she could not tell— banishing from her the being she had so dearly loved ; banishing him so utterly in that form, that he was, in fact, dead.

She desired him as her master, not as a lover, not even as a friend.

She had talked and thought of this act of renunciation before now many a time ; but, as happens always with any gr^at event in life, she had had no conception of the reality and agony of the thing until it was upon her. It was like tearing out her heart-strings. And the pain went on, or rather grew in intensity.

Through ages she had suffered alone and stood alone and acted alone. But she had never before faced that last and final and most awful isolation of the occultist; she had never been without love for any human being. Her heart had always clung to someone, perhaps often to someone weaker than herself. But now there was nothing for its tendrils to cling to. She had destroyed the last image left her, the last idol which had not already been destroyed by the development and circumstances of life. She had struck a death blow to the power of her imagination in connection with Ivan, and now that it was done she knew, looking back, how for years of her life that figure created by her imagination had been beside her. Never had she consciously recognised it till now, when her stronger and finer nature had instantly taken the initiative and killed it o u t; but she had been consoled and comforted, and indeed supported by it through her severest struggles in the past.