I knew not, and yet gazing upon them, thought which took no words to clothe itself mutely read their meaning.  Here were the culminations of the human, towering images of the good and evil man may aspire to.  I looked at the face of the evil adept.  His bright red-brown eyes burned with a strange radiance of power; I felt an answering emotion of pride, of personal intoxication, of psychic richness rise up within me gazing upon him.  His face was archetypal; the abstract passion which eluded me in the features of many people I knew, was here declared, exultant, defiant, giantesque; it seem to leap like fire, to be free.  In this face I was close to the legendary past, to the hopeless worlds where men were martyred by stony kings, where prayer was hopeless, where pity was none.  I traced a resemblance to many of the great Destroyers in history whose features have been preserved, Napoleon, Ramses and a hundred others, named and nameless, the long line of those who were crowned and sceptered in cruelty.  His strength was in human weakness, I saw this, for space and the hearts of men were bare before me.  Out of space there flowed to him a stream half invisible of red; it nourished that rich radiant energy of passion; it flowed from men as they walked and brooded in loneliness, or as they tossed in sleep.  I withdrew my gaze from this face which awoke in me a lurid sense accompaniment, and turned it on the other.  An aura of pale soft blue was around this figure through which gleamed an underlight as of universal gold.  The vision was already dim and departing, but I caught a glimpse of a face godlike in its calm, terrible in the beauty of a life we know only in dreams, with strength which is the end of the hero’s toil, which belongs to the many times martyred soul; yet not far away not in the past was its power, it was the might of life which exists eternally.  I understood how easy it would have been for this one to have ended the conflict, to have gained a material victory by its power, but this would not have touched on or furthered its spiritual ends.  Only its real being had force to attract that real being which was shrouded in the wavering figure.  This truth the adept of darkness knew also and therefore he intensified within the sense of pride and passionate personality.  Therefore they stirred not a hand nor a foot while under the stimulus of their presence culminated the good and evil in the life which had appealed to a higher tribunal to decide.  Then this figure wavering between the two moved forward and touched with its hand the Son of Light.  All at once the scene and actors vanished, and the eye that saw them was closed, I was alone with darkness and a hurricane of thoughts.

Strange and powerful figures!  I knew your secret of strength, it is only to be, nature quickened by your presence leaps up in response.  I knew no less the freedom of that human soul, for your power only revealed its unmanifest nature, it but precipitated experience.  I knew that although the gods and cosmic powers may war over us for ever, it is we alone declare them victors or vanquished.