“Therefore, have no fear, Kallikrates, when thou—­living, and but lately born—­shalt look upon thine own departed self, who breathed and died so long ago.  I do but turn one page in thy Book of Being, and show thee what is writ thereon.

“Behold!”

With a sudden motion she drew the shroud from the cold form, and let the lamplight play upon it.  I looked, and then shrank back terrified; since, say what she might in explanation, the sight was an uncanny one—­for her explanations were beyond the grasp of our finite minds, and when they were stripped from the mists of vague esoteric philosophy, and brought into conflict with the cold and horrifying fact, did not do much to break its force.  For there, stretched upon the stone bier before us, robed in white and perfectly preserved, was what appeared to be the body of Leo Vincey.  I stared from Leo, standing there alive, to Leo lying there dead, and could see no difference; except, perhaps, that the body on the bier looked older.  Feature for feature they were the same, even down to the crop of little golden curls, which was Leo’s most uncommon beauty.  It even seemed to me, as I looked, that the expression on the dead man’s face resembled that which I had sometimes seen upon Leo’s when he was plunged into profound sleep.  I can only sum up the closeness of the resemblance by saying that I never saw twins so exactly similar as that dead and living pair.

I turned to see what effect was produced upon Leo by the sight of his dead self, and found it to be one of partial stupefaction.  He stood for two or three minutes staring, and said nothing, and when at last he spoke it was only to ejaculate—­

“Cover it up, and take me away.”

“Nay, wait, Kallikrates,” said Ayesha, who, standing with the lamp raised above her head, flooding with its light her own rich beauty and the cold wonder of the death-clothed form upon the bier, resembled an inspired Sibyl rather than a woman, as she rolled out her majestic sentences with a grandeur and a freedom of utterance which I am, alas! quite unable to reproduce.

“Wait, I would show thee something, that no tittle of my crime may be hidden from thee.  Do thou, oh Holly, open the garment on the breast of the dead Kallikrates, for perchance my lord may fear to touch it himself.”

I obeyed with trembling hands.  It seemed a desecration and an unhallowed thing to touch that sleeping image of the live man by my side.  Presently his broad chest was bare, and there upon it, right over the heart, was a wound, evidently inflicted with a spear.