“Yes,” I thought to myself, “if she comes back as beautiful as we knew her.  But supposing she came back like that!"[*]

[*] What a terrifying reflection it is, by the way, that nearly all our deep love for women who are not our kindred depends—­at any rate, in the first instance—­upon their personal appearance.  If we lost them, and found them again dreadful to look on, though otherwise they were the very same, should we still love them? —­L.  H. H.

Well, and then we went.  We went, and left those two in the presence of the very well and spring of Life, but gathered to the cold company of Death.  How lonely they looked as they lay there, and how ill assorted!  That little heap had been for two thousand years the wisest, loveliest, proudest creature—­I can hardly call her woman—­in the whole universe.  She had been wicked, too, in her way; but, alas! such is the frailty of the human heart, her wickedness had not detracted from her charm.  Indeed, I am by no means certain that it did not add to it.  It was after all of a grand order, there was nothing mean or small about Ayesha.

And poor Job too!  His presentiment had come true, and there was an end of him.  Well, he has a strange burial-place—­no Norfolk hind ever had a stranger, or ever will; and it is something to lie in the same sepulchre as the poor remains of the imperial She.

We looked our last upon them and the indescribable rosy glow in which they lay, and then with hearts far too heavy for words we left them, and crept thence broken-down men—­so broken down that we even renounced the chance of practically immortal life, because all that made life valuable had gone from us, and we knew even then that to prolong our days indefinitely would only be to prolong our sufferings.  For we felt—­yes, both of us—­that having once looked Ayesha in the eyes, we could not forget her for ever and ever while memory and identity remained.  We both loved her now and for all time, she was stamped and carven on our hearts, and no other woman or interest could ever raze that splendid die.  And I—­there lies the sting—­I had and have no right to think thus of her.  As she told me, I was naught to her, and never shall be through the unfathomed depths of Time, unless, indeed, conditions alter, and a day comes at last when two men may love one woman, and all three be happy in the fact.  It is the only hope of my broken-heartedness, and a rather faint one.  Beyond it I have nothing.  I have paid down this heavy price, all that I am worth here and hereafter, and that is my sole reward.  With Leo it is different, and often and often I bitterly envy him his happy lot, for if She was right, and her wisdom and knowledge did not fail her at the last, which, arguing from the precedent of her own case, I think most unlikely, he has some future to look forward to.  But I have none, and yet—­mark the folly and the weakness of the human heart, and