: The Woman Who Vowed (The Demetrian) by Harding Ellison - Science fiction; Utopias Fiction

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ed to speak to me, Lydia."

"And you have been avoiding me," said Lydia.

"Yes," answered Ir?n?. "You have a matter to decide regarding which you have already guessed I am not altogether unconcerned."

Lydia lowered her voice as she said: "You still love Chairo?"

Ir?n? answered in a voice still lower, but firm, "I do."

For a few minutes they paced the cloister. Lydia was trying to decide how to confess her own secret, but she did not find the words. At last Ir?n? said:

"When the mission of Demeter was first tendered to me I was eighteen, and, although I had often preferred certain of my playmates to others, I had not known love. The honor of the mission made a great impression, and as it slowly came upon me that I was chosen to make of myself a sacrifice, the beauty of it filled my heart with happiness. It hardly occurred to me possible to refuse the mission; I was absorbed by one single desire--to make myself worthy of it. I thought very little about the sacrifice itself. I had the legend of Eros and Psyche in my mind; one day I should hear heavenly music and be approached as it were by an unknown god. And passing from the pagan to the Christian myth, I saw the Immaculate Conception of Murillo--that of the young maiden at the Prado in Madrid--and I felt lifted into the ecstasy of a mystic motherhood. So until I accepted the mission at the Eleusinian festival I lived in a rapture--the days passing in the studies and ministrations of our novitiate, the nights in dreamless sleep. But once the vows taken and the bridal night fixed, there came upon me a revulsion as it were from the outside and took control of my entire being so as to make me understand what the ancients meant when they described certain persons as 'possessed by an evil spirit.' The thought of the approaching crisis was a pure horror to me. I lost my appetite and sleep; or, if I slept, it was to dream a nightmare. Neither our priest nor priestess could console me, the legend of Eros and Psyche became abominable, the Immaculate Conception absurd, and, believe me, Lydia, nothing but pride kept me to my word. It was a bad pride, the pride that could not look forward to the humiliation of refusing a sacrifice I had once accepted. That pride held me in a vice and accomplished what religion itself would never have accomplished."

Ir?n? paused--and Lydia passed her arm around Ir?n?'s waist as they continued to pace the solitary cloister, whispering "Go on" in Ir?n?'s ear.

"You know the rest," continued Ir?n?. "The unknown god came to me in my terror and converted my terror into love; and as I look back at it now I am struck by two things: One, how unaccountable and unfounded the terror was; the other, how little my pride would have sufficed to overcome it had the terror been enforced by love."

Lydia looked at Ir?n? askance.

"I mean," said Ir?n?, "love for some one else!"

A sigh broke from Lydia. This was what she had been waiting for.

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