from this ruined land, and when you shake the dust of it off your feet its curse shall fall from you; you will return to 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.  It gathered on the white shape of Otomie seated in a chair hard by the bed, and I saw that her arms hung down and that her head was resting on the back of the chair.  Now I sprang up and peered into her face.  It was white and cold, and I could feel no breath upon her lips.  I seized her hand, that also was cold.  I spoke into her ear, I kissed her brow, but she did not move nor answer.  The light grew quickly, and now I saw all.  Otomie was dead, and by her own act.