ill she find
her womanhood, and then all this story will be forgotten by her. Of
her father you must tell her that he died when you went out to hunt the
river-beasts together, and if she seeks for certain others, that they
have gone away. But I think that she will ask little more when she
learns that he is dead, since I have laid that command upon her soul."

"Hypnotic suggestion," thought I to myself, "and I only hope to heaven
that it will work."

Ayesha seemed to guess what was passing through my mind, for she nodded
and said,

"Have no fear, Allan, for I am what the black axe-bearer and the little
yellow man called a 'witch' which means, as you who are instructed know,
one who has knowledge of medicine and other things and who holds a key
to some of the mysteries that lie hid in Nature."

"For instance," I suggested, "of how to transport yourself into a battle
at the right moment, and out of it again--also at the right moment."

"Yes, Allan, since watching from afar, I saw that those Amahagger curs
were about to flee and that I was needed there to hearten them and to
put fear into the army of Rezu. So I came."

"But how did you come, Ayesha?"

She laughed as she answered,

"Perhaps I did not come at all. Perhaps you only thought I came; since I
seemed to be there the rest matters nothing."

As I still looked unconvinced she went on,

"Oh! foolish man, seek not to learn of that which is too high for you.
Yet listen. You in your ignorance suppose that the soul dwells within
the body, do you not?"

I answered that I had always been under this impression.

"Yet, Allan, it is otherwise, for the body dwells within the soul."

"Like the pearl in an oyster," I suggested.

"Aye, in a sense, since the pearl which to you is beautiful, is to the
oyster a sickness and a poison, and so is the body to the soul whose
temple it troubles and defiles. Yet round it is the white and holy soul
that ever seeks to bring the vile body to its own purity and colour, yet
oft-times fails. Learn, Allan, that flesh and spirit are the deadliest
foes joined together by a high decree that they may forget their hate
and perfect each other, or failing, be separate to all eternity, the
spirit going to its own place and the flesh to its corruption."

"A strange theory," I said.

"Aye, Allan, and one which is so new to you that never will you
understand it. Yet it is true and I set it out for this reason. The soul
of man, being at lib