“Hearken, Papave.  Thou art of the blood, and to thee alone have I opened all the doors of wisdom.  If I pass now or at any time, take thou the ancient power, fill thou my place, and in all things do as I have instructed thee, that from this Mountain light may shine upon the world.  Further I command thee, and thee also, Oros my priest, that if I be summoned hence you entertain these strangers hospitably until it is possible to escort them from the land, whether by the road they came or across the northern hills and deserts.  Should the Khania Atene attempt to detain them against their will, then raise the Tribes upon her in the name of the Hesea; depose her from her seat, conquer her land and hold it.  Hear and obey.”

“Mother, we hear and we will obey,” answered Oros and Papave as with a single voice.

She waved her hand to show that this matter was finished; then after long thought spoke again, addressing herself to the Khania.

“Atene, last night thou didst ask me a question—­why thou dost love this man,” and she pointed to Leo.  “To that the answer would be easy, for is he not one who might well stir passion in the breast of a woman such as thou art?  But thou didst say also that thine own heart and the wisdom of yonder magician, thy uncle, told thee that since thy soul first sprang to life thou hadst loved him, and didst adjure me by the Power to whom I must give my account to draw the curtain from the past and let the truth be known.

“Woman, the hour has come, and I obey thy summons—­not because thou dost command but because it is my will.  Of the beginning I can tell thee nothing, who am still human and no goddess.  I know not why we three are wrapped in this coil of fate; I know not the destinies to which we journey up the ladder of a thousand lives, with grief and pain climbing the endless stair of circumstance, or, if I know, I may not say.  Therefore I take up the tale where my own memory gives me light.”

The Hesea paused, and we saw her frame shake as though beneath some fearful inward effort of the will.  “Look now behind you,” she cried, throwing her arms wide.

We turned, and at first saw nothing save the great curtain of fire that rose from the abyss of the volcano, whereof, as I have told, the crest was bent over by the wind like the crest of a breaking billow.  But presently, as we watched, in the depths of this red veil, Nature’s awful lamp-flame, a picture began to form as it forms in the seer’s magic crystal.

Behold! a temple set amid sands and washed by a wide, palm-bordered river, and across its pyloned court processions of priests, who pass to and fro with flaunting banners.  The court empties; I could see the shadow of a falcon’s wings that fled across its sunlit floor.  A man clad in a priest’s white robe, shaven-headed, and barefooted, enters through the southern pylon gate and walks slowly towards a painted granite shrine, in which sits the image of a woman crowned with the double crown of Egypt, surmounted by a lotus bloom, and holding in her hand the sacred sistrum.  Now, as though he heard some sound, he halts and looks towards us, and by the heaven above me, his face is the face of Leo Vincey in his youth, the face too of that Kallikrates whose corpse we had seen in the Caves of Kor!