Behind a rock by a bed of campanulas and other mountain
flowers and ferns, was a bench near to the banks of a little stream, on
which we seated ourselves.

"What have you to say, Horace?" asked Leo laying his hand upon my arm.

"Say?" I answered. "That things have come about most marvellously; that
we have dreamed aright and laboured not in vain; that you are the most
fortunate of men and should be the most happy."

He looked at me somewhat strangely, and answered--"Yes, of course;
she is lovely, is she not--but," and his voice dropped to its lowest
whisper, "I wish, Horace, that Ayesha were a little more human, even as
human as she was in the Caves of Kor. I don't think she is quite flesh
and blood, I felt it when she kissed me--if you can call it a kiss--for
she barely touched my hair. Indeed how can she be who changed thus in an
hour? Flesh and blood are not born of flame, Horace."

"Are you sure that she was so born?" I asked. "Like the visions on the
fire, may not that hideous shape have been but an illusion of our minds?
May she not be still the same Ayesha whom we knew in Kor, not re-born,
but wafted hither by some mysterious agency?"

"Perhaps. Horace, we do not know--I think that we shall never know.
But I admit that to me the thing is terrifying. I am drawn to her by
an infinite attraction, her eyes set my blood on fire, the touch of her
hand is as that of a wand of madness laid upon my brain. And yet between
us there is some wall, invisible, still present. Or perhaps it is only
fancy. But, Horace, I think that she is afraid of Atene. Why, in the
old days the Khania would have been dead and forgotten in an hour--you
remember Ustane?"

"Perhaps she may have grown more gentle, Leo, who, like ourselves, has
learned hard lessons."

"Yes," he answered, "I hope that is so. At any rate she has grown more
divine--only, Horace, what kind of a husband shall I be for that bright
being, if ever I get so far?"

"Why should you not get so far?" I asked angrily, for his words jarred
upon my tense nerves.

"I don't know," he answered, "but on general principles do you think
that such fortune will be allowed to a man? Also, what did Atene mean
when she said that man and spirit cannot mate--and--other things?"

"She meant that she _hoped_ they could not, I imagine, and, Leo, it is
useless to trouble yourself with forebodings that are more fitted to my
years than yours, and probably are based on nothing. Be a philosop