“What have you to say, Horace?” asked Leo laying his hand upon my arm.

“Say?” I answered.  “That things have come about most marvellously; that we have dreamed aright and laboured not in vain; that you are the most fortunate of men and should be the most happy.”

He looked at me somewhat strangely, and answered—­“Yes, of course; she is lovely, is she not—­but,” and his voice dropped to its lowest whisper, “I wish, Horace, that Ayesha were a little more human, even as human as she was in the Caves of Kor.  I don’t think she is quite flesh and blood, I felt it when she kissed me—­if you can call it a kiss—­for she barely touched my hair.  Indeed how can she be who changed thus in an hour?  Flesh and blood are not born of flame, Horace.”

“Are you sure that she was so born?” I asked.  “Like the visions on the fire, may not that hideous shape have been but an illusion of our minds?  May she not be still the same Ayesha whom we knew in Kor, not re-born, but wafted hither by some mysterious agency?”

“Perhaps.  Horace, we do not know—­I think that we shall never know.  But I admit that to me the thing is terrifying.  I am drawn to her by an infinite attraction, her eyes set my blood on fire, the touch of her hand is as that of a wand of madness laid upon my brain.  And yet between us there is some wall, invisible, still present.  Or perhaps it is only fancy.  But, Horace, I think that she is afraid of Atene.  Why, in the old days the Khania would have been dead and forgotten in an hour—­you remember Ustane?”

“Perhaps she may have grown more gentle, Leo, who, like ourselves, has learned hard lessons.”

“Yes,” he answered, “I hope that is so.  At any rate she has grown more divine—­only, Horace, what kind of a husband shall I be for that bright being, if ever I get so far?”

“Why should you not get so far?” I asked angrily, for his words jarred upon my tense nerves.

“I don’t know,” he answered, “but on general principles do you think that such fortune will be allowed to a man?  Also, what did Atene mean when she said that man and spirit cannot mate—­and—­other things?”

“She meant that she hoped they could not, I imagine, and, Leo, it is useless to trouble yourself with forebodings that are more fitted to my years than yours, and probably are based on nothing.  Be a philosopher, Leo.  You have striven by wonderful ways such as are unknown in the history of the world; you have attained.  Take the goods the gods provide you—­the glory, the love and the power—­and let the future look to itself.”

Before he could answer Oros appeared from round the rock, and, bowing with more than his usual humility to Leo, said that the Hesea desired our presence at a service in the Sanctuary.  Rejoiced at the prospect of seeing her again before he had hoped to do so, Leo sprang up and we accompanied him back to our apartment.