YAOUMA. Before the outrage, already, they had taken vengeance on you.

MIERIS. Good Yaouma, you would give me back my faith, you who could not keep your own.

YAOUMA. Mistress, I lied to you; nothing is destroyed in me.

MIERIS. You refuse to give yourself in sacrifice!--Oh, you are right....

YAOUMA. I do not refuse.

MIERIS. You do not?

YAOUMA. No. Know you how I learned, a while ago, that you were gone?

MIERIS. How?

YAOUMA. I, too, was seeking to escape.

MIERIS. You?

YAOUMA. To go to the temple, to place myself in hands of the priests, to give to Ammon the victim he has chosen.

MIERIS. Do you believe in all these fables still?

YAOUMA [_in a low voice_] Mistress, I have _seen_ Isis.

MIERIS. Has one of her images been spared then?

YAOUMA. It was not an image that I saw. It was Isis herself, the G.o.ddess--I have _seen_ her.

MIERIS. You--you have seen--what is it? I know not what you say--to see--that word has no clear sense for me.

YAOUMA. She has spoken to me--

MIERIS. You have heard her voice--

YAOUMA. I have heard her voice.

MIERIS. How! How!--You were sleeping--'twas in a dream--

YAOUMA. I did not sleep. I did not dream. I saw her. I heard her. I was alone, and I wept. A great sound filled me with terror. A great light blinded me. Perfumes unknown ravished my senses. And I beheld the G.o.ddess, more beauteous than a queen. Then all was gone--

MIERIS. But her voice--

YAOUMA. The next day she came again, she spoke to me, she called me by name and said to me: "Egypt will be saved by thee."

MIERIS. Why did you not speak of it?

YAOUMA. I feared they would not believe me.

MIERIS. Oh, Yaouma, how I envy you! If you but knew the ill they have done me. They have half killed me, killing all the legends and all the memories that were mine. They made me blush at my simplicity. I felt shamed to have been so easily fooled by such gross make-believes. And now, what have I gained by this revelation? My soul is a house after the burning, black, ruined, empty. Nothing is left but ruins, ruins one might laugh at. [_In tears_] I am parched with thirst, I hunger, I tremble with cold. They have made my soul blind, too. I cry out for help, for consolation. Oh! for a lie, some other lie, to replace the one they have taken away from me!

YAOUMA. Why ask a lie? Why not forget what they have said. Why not recall what you learned at your mother's knee--Why not, yourself, set up in your heart again, those images which they threw down--

MIERIS. Yes! Yes! I will do it. They have awakened my reason, and killed my faith. I shall kill my reason, to revive our G.o.ds. Though I no longer believe, I shall do the actions of believers--and, if my G.o.d be false, I shall believe so firmly in him that I shall make him true!--Yes, the lowest, the most senseless superst.i.tions, I venerate them, I exalt--I glory in them! The ugliest, the most deformed, the most unreal of our G.o.ds, I adore them, and I bow down before their impossibility. [_She kneels_] Oh, I stifle in their petty narrow world, sad as a forest without birds! Air! Air! Singing! The sound of wings! Things that fly!

YAOUMA [_kneeling_] Let me be sacrificed!

MIERIS. Let me have a reason for living!

YAOUMA. I would give my life to the G.o.ds who gave me birth!

MIERIS. I would believe that there is some one above men!

YAOUMA. Some one who watches over us!

MIERIS. Who will console as with his justice!

YAOUMA. Some one to cry our sorrows to!

MIERIS. Yes, some one to pray to, and to thank!

YAOUMA [_sobbing_] Oh! the pity of it, to feel we were abandoned!

MIERIS [_throwing herself in Yaouma's arms_] I would not be abandoned!

YAOUMA. We are not! G.o.ds! G.o.ds!

MIERIS. G.o.ds! We need G.o.ds! There are too many sorrows, it is not possible this earth should groan as it groans beneath a pitiless heaven--Ammon, reveal thyself.

YAOUMA. Isis, show thyself! Have pity! [_A pause. Then in a hushed voice_] Mistress, I think she is going to appear to me again!--Isis!--mistress--do you hear--

MIERIS [_listening_] I hear nothing.

YAOUMA. Singing--the sound of harps--'tis she--

MIERIS. I do not hear--

YAOUMA. She speaks! Yes--G.o.ddess!

MIERIS. Do you see her?

YAOUMA [_in ecstasy_] I see her! She is bending down above us--

MIERIS. O G.o.ddess!--

YAOUMA. She is gone--Mistress, you could not see her, but did you hear the sound of her feet?

MIERIS. Yes, I believe I heard it--I believe and I am comforted.