vanished silently and
mysteriously as it had risen, and once more the lamplight, and the
lamplight only, shone on the placid surface of that limpid, living
mirror.

"Hast thou aught to ask me before thou goest, oh Holly?" she said, after
a few moments' reflection. "It is but a rude life that thou must live
here, for these people are savages, and know not the ways of cultivated
man. Not that I am troubled thereby, for behold my food," and she
pointed to the fruit upon the little table. "Naught but fruit doth
ever pass my lips--fruit and cakes of flour, and a little water. I have
bidden my girls to wait upon thee. They are mutes, thou knowest, deaf
are they and dumb, and therefore the safest of servants, save to those
who can read their faces and their signs. I bred them so--it hath taken
many centuries and much trouble; but at last I have triumphed. Once I
succeeded before, but the race was too ugly, so I let it die away; but
now, as thou seest, they are otherwise. Once, too, I reared a race of
giants, but after a while Nature would no more of it, and it died away.
Hast thou aught to ask of me?"

"Ay, one thing, oh Ayesha," I said boldly; but feeling by no means as
bold as I trust I looked. "I would gaze upon thy face."

She laughed out in her bell-like notes. "Bethink thee, Holly," she
answered; "bethink thee. It seems that thou knowest the old myths of the
gods of Greece. Was there not one Actaeon who perished miserably because
he looked on too much beauty? If I show thee my face, perchance thou
wouldst perish miserably also; perchance thou wouldst eat out thy heart
in impotent desire; for know I am not for thee--I am for no man, save
one, who hath been, but is not yet."

"As thou wilt, Ayesha," I said. "I fear not thy beauty. I have put my
heart away from such vanity as woman's loveliness, that passeth like a
flower."

"Nay, thou errest," she said; "that does _not_ pass. My beauty endures
even as I endure; still, if thou wilt, oh rash man, have thy will; but
blame not me if passion mount thy reason, as the Egyptian breakers used
to mount a colt, and guide it whither thou wilt not. Never may the man
to whom my beauty has been unveiled put it from his mind, and therefore
even with these savages do I go veiled, lest they vex me, and I should
slay them. Say, wilt thou see?"

"I will," I answered, my curiosity overpowering me.

She lifted her white and rounded arms--never had I seen such arms
before--and slowly,