I picked up the glass, and held it before Ustane’s eyes.  She gazed, then felt at her hair, then gazed again, and then sank upon the ground with a sort of sob.

“Now, wilt thou go, or must I strike a second time?” asked Ayesha, in mockery.  “Look, I have set my seal upon thee so that I may know thee till thy hair is all as white as it.  If I see thy face again, be sure, too, that thy bones shall soon be whiter than my mark upon thy hair.”

Utterly awed and broken down, the poor creature rose, and, marked with that awful mark, crept from the room, sobbing bitterly.

“Look not so frighted, my Holly,” said Ayesha, when she had gone.  “I tell thee I deal not in magic—­there is no such thing.  ’Tis only a force that thou dost not understand.  I marked her to strike terror to her heart, else must I have slain her.  And now I will bid my servants to bear my Lord Kallikrates to a chamber near mine own, that I may watch over him, and be ready to greet him when he wakes; and thither, too, shalt thou come, my Holly, and the white man, thy servant.  But one thing remember at thy peril.  Naught shalt thou say to Kallikrates as to how this woman went, and as little as may be of me.  Now, I have warned thee!” and she slid away to give her orders, leaving me more absolutely confounded than ever.  Indeed, so bewildered was I, and racked and torn with such a succession of various emotions, that I began to think that I must be going mad.  However, perhaps fortunately, I had but little time to reflect, for presently the mutes arrived to carry the sleeping Leo and our possessions across the central cave, so for a while all was bustle.  Our new rooms were situated immediately behind what we used to call Ayesha’s boudoir—­the curtained space where I had first seen her.  Where she herself slept I did not then know, but it was somewhere quite close.

That night I passed in Leo’s room, but he slept through it like the dead, never once stirring.  I also slept fairly well, as, indeed, I needed to do, but my sleep was full of dreams of all the horrors and wonders I had undergone.  Chiefly, however, I was haunted by that frightful piece of diablerie by which Ayesha left her finger-marks upon her rival’s hair.  There was something so terrible about her swift, snake-like movement, and the instantaneous blanching of that threefold line, that, if the results to Ustane had been much more tremendous, I doubt if they would have impressed me so deeply.  To this day I often dream of that awful scene, and see the weeping woman, bereaved, and marked like Cain, cast a last look at her lover, and creep from the presence of her dread Queen.