But if it were possible that a woman could exist for two thousand years, this might be possible also—­anything might be possible.  I myself might, for aught I knew, be a reincarnation of some other forgotten self, or perhaps the last of a long line of ancestral selves.  Well, vive la guerre! why not?  Only, unfortunately, I had no recollection of these previous conditions.  The idea was so absurd to me that I burst out laughing, and, addressing the sculptured picture of a grim-looking warrior on the cave wall, called out to him aloud, “Who knows, old fellow?—­perhaps I was your contemporary.  By Jove! perhaps I was you and you are I,” and then I laughed again at my own folly, and the sound of my laughter rang dismally along the vaulted roof, as though the ghost of the warrior had echoed the ghost of a laugh.

Next I bethought me that I had not been to see how Leo was, so, taking up one of the lamps which was burning at my bedside, I slipped off my shoes and crept down the passage to the entrance of his sleeping cave.  The draught of the night air was lifting his curtain to and fro gently, as though spirit hands were drawing and redrawing it.  I slid into the vault-like apartment, and looked round.  There was a light by which I could see that Leo was lying on the couch, tossing restlessly in his fever, but asleep.  At his side, half-lying on the floor, half-leaning against the stone couch, was Ustane.  She held his hand in one of hers, but she too was dozing, and the two made a pretty, or rather a pathetic, picture.  Poor Leo! his cheek was burning red, there were dark shadows beneath his eyes, and his breath came heavily.  He was very, very ill; and again the horrible fear seized me that he might die, and I be left alone in the world.  And yet if he lived he would perhaps be my rival with Ayesha; even if he were not the man, what chance should I, middle-aged and hideous, have against his bright youth and beauty?  Well, thank Heaven! my sense of right was not dead. She had not killed that yet; and, as I stood there, I prayed to Heaven in my heart that my boy, my more than son, might live—­ay, even if he proved to be the man.

Then I went back as softly as I had come, but still I could not sleep; the sight and thought of dear Leo lying there so ill had but added fuel to the fire of my unrest.  My wearied body and overstrained mind awakened all my imagination into preternatural activity.  Ideas, visions, almost inspirations, floated before it with startling vividness.  Most of them were grotesque enough, some were ghastly, some recalled thoughts and sensations that had for years been buried in the debris of my past life.  But, behind and above them all, hovered the shape of that awful woman, and through them gleamed the memory of her entrancing loveliness.  Up and down the cave I strode—­up and down.