ess, this place of a people that was before
them. When I would have taught them wisdom in Jerusalem they stoned me,
ay, at the Gate of the Temple those white-bearded hypocrites and Rabbis
hounded the people on to stone me! See, here is the mark of it to this
day!" and with a sudden move she pulled up the gauzy wrapping on her
rounded arm, and pointed to a little scar that showed red against its
milky beauty.

I shrank back, horrified.

"Pardon me, oh Queen," I said, "but I am bewildered. Nigh upon two
thousand years have rolled across the earth since the Jewish Messiah
hung upon His cross at Golgotha. How then canst thou have taught thy
philosophy to the Jews before He was? Thou art a woman and no spirit.
How can a woman live two thousand years? Why dost thou befool me, oh
Queen?"

She leaned back upon the couch, and once more I felt the hidden eyes
playing upon me and searching out my heart.

"Oh man!" she said at last, speaking very slowly and deliberately, "it
seems that there are still things upon the earth of which thou knowest
naught. Dost thou still believe that all things die, even as those very
Jews believed? I tell thee that naught dies. There is no such thing as
Death, though there be a thing called Change. See," and she pointed to
some sculptures on the rocky wall. "Three times two thousand years have
passed since the last of the great race that hewed those pictures fell
before the breath of the pestilence which destroyed them, yet are they
not dead. E'en now they live; perchance their spirits are drawn towards
us at this very hour," and she glanced round. "Of a surety it sometimes
seems to me that my eyes can see them."

"Yes, but to the world they are dead."

"Ay, for a time; but even to the world are they born again and again. I,
yes I, Ayesha[*]--for that, stranger, is my name--I say to thee that
I wait now for one I loved to be born again, and here I tarry till he
finds me, knowing of a surety that hither he will come, and that here,
and here only, shall he greet me. Why, dost thou believe that I, who
am all-powerful, I, whose loveliness is more than the loveliness of the
Grecian Helen, of whom they used to sing, and whose wisdom is wider, ay,
far more wide and deep than the wisdom of Solomon the Wise--I, who know
the secrets of the earth and its riches, and can turn all things to
my uses--I, who have even for a while overcome Change, that ye call
Death--why, I say, oh stranger, dost thou think t