short, sobbing gasps like one
who is very frightened.

Ah! I thought, Ayesha has cast herself into the pit. The tragedy is
finished!

Then it was that the wondrous music came. Of course it _may_ have been
only the sound of priests chanting beyond us, but I do not think so,
since its quality was quite different to any that I heard in the temple
before or afterwards: to any indeed that ever I heard upon the earth.

I cannot describe it, but it was awful to listen to, yet most
entrancing. From the black, smoke-veiled pit where the fire had burned
it welled and echoed--now a single heavenly voice, now a sweet chorus,
and now an air-shaking thunder as of a hundred organs played to time.

That diverse and majestic harmony seemed to include, to express
every human emotion, and I have often thought since then that in its
all-embracing scope and range, this, the song or paean of her re-birth
was symbolical of the infinite variety of Ayesha's spirit. Yet like that
spirit it had its master notes; power, passion, suffering, mystery and
loveliness. Also there could be no doubt as to the general significance
of the chant by whomsoever it was sung. It was the changeful story of a
mighty soul; it was worship, worship, worship of a queen divine!

Like slow clouds of incense fading to the bannered roof of some high
choir, the bursts of unearthly melodies grew faint; in the far distance
of the hollow pit they wailed themselves away.

Look! from the east a single ray of upward-springing light.

"Behold the dawn," said the quiet voice of Oros.

That ray pierced the heavens above our heads, a very sword of flame. It
sank downwards, swiftly. Suddenly it fell, not upon us, for as yet
the rocky walls of our chamber warded it away, but on to the little
promontory at its edge.

Oh! and there--a Glory covered with a single garment--stood a shape
celestial. It seemed to be asleep, since the eyes were shut. Or was it
dead, for at first that face was a face of death? Look, the sunlight
played upon her, shining through the thin veil, the dark eyes opened
like the eyes of a wondering child; the blood of life flowed up the
ivory bosom into the pallid cheeks; the raiment of black and curling
tresses wavered in the wind; the head of the jewelled snake that held
them sparkled beneath her breast.

Was it an illusion, or was this Ayesha as she had been when she entered
the rolling flame in the caverns of Kor? Our knees gave way beneath us,
and d