A third time the dream descended on Alan like a cloud.  It seemed to him that he was borne beyond the flaming borders of the world.  Everything around was new and unfamiliar, vast, changing, lovely, terrible.  He stood alone upon a pearly plain and the sky above him was lit with red moons, many and many of them that hung there like lamps.  Spirits began to pass him.  He could catch something of their splendour as they sped by with incredible swiftness; he could hear the music of their laughter.  One rose up at his side.  It was the Asika, only a thousand times more splendid; clothed in all the glory of hell.  Majestically she bent towards him, her glowing eyes held his, the deadly perfume of her breath beat upon his brow and made him drunken.

She spoke to him and her voice sounded like distant bells.

“Through many a life, through many a life,” she said, “bought with much blood, paid for with a million tears, but mine at last, the soul that I have won to comfort my soul in the eternal day.  Come to the place I have made ready for you, the hell that shall turn to heaven at your step, come, you by whom I am redeemed, and drive away those gods that torture me because I was their servant that I might win you.”

So she spoke, and though all his soul revolted, yet the fearful strength that was in her seemed to draw him onward whither she would go.  Then a light shone and that light was the face of Barbara and with a suddenness that was almost awful, the wild dream came to an end.

Alan was in his own room again, though how he got there he did not recollect.

“Jeekie,” he said, “what has happened?  I seem to have had a very curious dream, there in the Treasure-place, and to have heard you telling the Asika a string of incredible falsehoods.”

“Oh! no, Major, Jeekie can’t lie, too good Christian; he tell her what he see, or what he think she see if she look, ’cause though p’raps he see nothing, she never believe that.  And,” he added with a burst of confidence, “what the dickens it matter what he tell her, so long as she swallow same and keep quiet?  Nasty things always make women like Asika quite outrageous.  Give them sweet to suck, say Jeekie, and if they ill afterwards, that no fault of his.  They had sweet.”

“Quite so, Jeekie, quite so, only I should advise you not to play too many tricks upon the Asika, lest she should happen to find you out.  How did I get back here?”

“Like man that walk in his sleep, Major.  She go first, you follow, just as little lamb after Mary in hymn.”

“Jeekie, did you really see anything at all?”

“No, Major, nothing partic’lar, except ghost of Mrs. Jeekie and of your reverend uncle, both of them very angry.  That magic all stuff, Major.  Asika put something in your grub make you drunk, so that you think her very wise.  Don’t think of it no more, Major, or you go off your chump.  If Jeekie see nothing, depend on it there nothing to see.”