ntelligible by the love, which has one common language
and one common look to all who have loved,--the love unmistakably heard
in the loving tone, unmistakably seen in the loving face.

A moment or so more, and she had come round from the opposite side of
the fire-pile, and bending over Margrave's upturned brow, kissed it
quietly, solemnly; and then her countenance grew fierce, her crest rose
erect; it was the lioness protecting her young. She stretched forth her
arm from the black mantle, athwart the pale front that now again bent
over the caldron,--stretched it towards the haunted and hollow-sounding
space beyond, in the gesture of one whose right hand has the sway of the
sceptre. And then her voice stole on the air in the music of a chant,
not loud, yet far-reaching; so thrilling, so sweet, and yet so solemn,
that I could at once comprehend how legend united of old the spell of
enchantment with the power of song. All that I recalled of the effects
which, in the former time, Margrave's strange chants had produced on the
ear that they ravished and the thoughts they confused, was but as the
wild bird's imitative carol, compared to the depth and the art and the
soul of the singer, whose voice seemed endowed with a charm to enthrall
all the tribes of creation, though the language it used for that charm
might to them, as to me, be unknown. As the song ceased, I heard, from
behind, sounds like those I had heard in the spaces before me,--the
tramp of invisible feet, the whir of invisible wings, as if armies were
marching to aid against armies in march to destroy.

"Look not in front nor around," said Ayesha. "Look, like him, on the
caldron below. The circle and the lamps are yet bright; I will tell you
when the light again fails."

I dropped my eyes on the caldron.

"See," whispered Margrave, "the sparkles at last begin to arise, and the
rose-hues to deepen,--signs that we near the last process."

CHAPTER LXXXVII.

The fifth hour had passed away, when Ayesha said to me, "Lo! the circle
is fading; the lamps grow dim. Look now without fear on the space
beyond; the eyes that appalled thee are again lost in air, as lightnings
that fleet back into cloud."

I looked up, and the spectres had vanished. The sky was tinged with
sulphurous hues, the red and the black intermixed. I replenished the
lamps and the ring in front, thriftily, heedfully; but when I came to
the sixth lamp, not a drop in the vessel that fed them was