“I am glad to hear it is not often, Lady Yva, since thoughts are generally considered private.”

“Yes, and therefore I will read yours no more.  Why should I, when they are so full of disbelief of all I tell you, and sometimes of other things about myself which I do not seek to know?”

“No wonder that, according to the story in the pictures, those Nations, whom you named Barbarians, made an end of your people, Lady Yva.”

“You are mistaken, Bickley; the Lord Oro made an end of the Nations, though against my prayer,” she added with a sigh.

Then Bickley departed in a rage, and did not appear again for an hour.

“He is angry,” she said, looking after him; “nor do I wonder.  It is hard for the very clever like Bickley, who think that they have mastered all things, to find that after all they are quite ignorant.  I am sorry for him, and I like him very much.”

“Then you would be sorry for me also, Lady Yva?”

“Why?” she asked with a dazzling smile, “when your heart is athirst for knowledge, gaping for it like a fledgling’s mouth for food, and, as it chances, though I am not very wise, I can satisfy something of your soul-hunger.”

“Not very wise!” I repeated.

“No, Humphrey.  I think that Bastin, who in many ways is so stupid, has more true wisdom than I have, because he can believe and accept without question.  After all, the wisdom of my people is all of the universe and its wonders.  What you think magic is not magic; it is only gathered knowledge and the finding out of secrets.  Bickley will tell you the same, although as yet he does not believe that the mind of man can stretch so far.”

“You mean that your wisdom has in it nothing of the spirit?”

“Yes, Humphrey, that is what I mean.  I do not even know if there is such a thing as spirit.  Our god was Fate; Bastin’s god is a spirit, and I think yours also.”

“Yes.”

“Therefore, I wish you and Bastin to teach me of your god, as does Oro, my father.  I want—­oh! so much, Humphrey, to learn whether we live after death.”

“You!” I exclaimed.  “You who, according to the story, have slept for two hundred and fifty thousand years!  You, who have, unless I mistake, hinted that during that sleep you may have lived in other shapes!  Do you doubt whether we can live after death?”

“Yes.  Sleep induced by secret arts is not death, and during that sleep the I within might wander and inhabit other shapes, because it is forbidden to be idle.  Moreover, what seems to be death may not be death, only another form of sleep from which the I awakes again upon the world.  But at last comes the real death, when the I is extinguished to the world.  That much I know, because my people learned it.”

“You mean, you know that men and women may live again and again upon the world?”

“Yes, Humphrey, I do.  For in the world there is only a certain store of life which in many forms travels on and on, till the lot of each I is fulfilled.  Then comes the real death, and after that—­what, oh!—­what?”