rd it before ever I saw the darksome Caves of Kor. Often have
I observed, my Holly, that music lingers longer than aught else in this
changeful world, though it is rare that the very words should remain
unvaried. Come, beloved--tell me, by what name shall I call thee? Thou
art Kallikrates and yet----"

"Call me Leo, Ayesha," he answered, "as I was christened in the only
life of which I have any knowledge. This Kallikrates seems to have been
an unlucky man, and the deeds he did, if in truth he was aught other
than a tool in the hand of destiny, have bred no good to the inheritors
of his body--or his spirit, whichever it may be--or to those women with
whom his life was intertwined. Call me Leo, then, for of Kallikrates I
have had enough since that night when I looked upon the last of him in
Kor."

"Ah! I remember," she answered, "when thou sawest thyself lying in that
narrow bed, and I sang thee a song, did I not, of the past and of the
future? I can recall two lines of it; the rest I have forgotten--

"'Onward, never weary, clad with splendour for a robe!
Till accomplished be our fate, and the night is rushing down.'

"Yes, my Leo, now indeed we are 'clad with splendour for a robe,' and
now our fate draws near to its accomplishment. Then perchance will come
the down-rushing of the night;" and she sighed, looked up tenderly and
said, "See, I am talking to thee in Arabic. Hast thou forgotten it?"

"No."

"Then let it be our tongue, for I love it best of all, who lisped it at
my mother's knee. Now leave me here alone awhile; I would think. Also,"
she added thoughtfully, and speaking with a strange and impressive
inflexion of the voice, "there are some to whom I must give audience."

So we went, all of us, supposing that Ayesha was about to receive a
deputation of the Chiefs of the Mountain Tribes who came to felicitate
her upon her betrothal.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE THIRD ORDEAL

An hour, two hours passed, while we strove to rest in our sleeping
place, but could not, for some influence disturbed us.

"Why does not Ayesha come?" asked Leo at length, pausing in his walk up
and down the room. "I want to see her again; I cannot bear to be apart
from her. I feel as though she were drawing me to her."

"How can I tell you? Ask Oros; he is outside the door."

So he went and asked him, but Oros only smiled, and answered that the
Hesea had not entered her chamber, so doubtless she must still remain in
the S