y him nay--ah! thou knowest not
how much.

"Moreover, I will declare myself to thee, old friend; whatever else
I be, at least I am too womanly to listen to the pleadings of my best
beloved and not myself be moved. See, I have set a curb upon desire
and drawn it until my heart bleeds; but if he pursues me with continual
words and looks of burning love, who knoweth but that I shall kindle in
his flame and throw the reins of reason to the winds?

"Oh, then together we might race adown our passions' steep; together
dare the torrent that rages at its foot, and there perchance be whelmed
or torn asunder. Nay, nay, another space of journeying, but a little
space, and we reach the bridge my wisdom found, and cross it safely, and
beyond for ever ride on at ease through the happy meadows of our love."

Then she was silent, nor would she speak more upon the matter. Also--and
this was the worst of it--even now I was not sure that she told me the
truth, or, at any rate, all of it, for to Ayesha's mind truth seemed
many coloured as are the rays of light thrown from the different faces
of a cut jewel. We never could be certain which shade of it she was
pleased to present, who, whether by preference or of necessity, as
she herself had said, spoke of such secrets in figures of speech and
parables.

It is a fact that to this hour I do not know whether Ayesha is spirit
or woman, or, as I suspect, a blend of both. I do not know the limits of
her powers, or if that elaborate story of the beginning of her love for
Leo was true--which personally I doubt--or but a fable, invented by her
mind, and through it, as she had hinted, pictured on the flame for her
own hidden purposes.

I do not know whether when first we saw her on the Mountain she was
really old and hideous, or did but put on that shape in our eyes in
order to test her lover. I do not know whether, as the priest Oros bore
witness--which he may well have been bidden to do--her spirit passed
into the body of the dead priestess of Hes, or whether when she
seemed to perish there so miserably, her body and her soul were wafted
straightway from the Caves of Kor to this Central Asian peak.

I do not know why, as she was so powerful, she did not come to seek us,
instead of leaving us to seek her through so many weary years, though I
suggest that some superior force forbade her to do more than companion
us unseen, watching our every act, reading our every thought, until at
length we re