“Then I am going to look for her.  Come, Oros, and you too, Horace.”

Oros bowed, but declined, saying that he was bidden to bide at our door, adding that we, “to whom all the paths were open,” could return to the Sanctuary if we thought well.

“I do think well,” replied Leo sharply.  “Will you come, Horace, or shall I go without you?”

I hesitated.  The Sanctuary was a public place, it is true, but Ayesha had said that she desired to be alone there for awhile.  Without more words, however, Leo shrugged his shoulders and started.

“You will never find your way,” I said, and followed him.

We went down the long passages that were dimly lighted with lamps and came to the gallery.  Here we found no lamps; still we groped our way to the great wooden doors.  They were shut, but Leo pushed upon them impatiently, and one of them swung open a little, so that we could squeeze ourselves between them.  As we passed it closed noiselessly behind us.

Now we should have been in the Sanctuary, and in the full blaze of those awful columns of living fire.  But they were out, or we had strayed elsewhere; at least the darkness was intense.  We tried to work our way back to the doors again, but could not.  We were lost.

More, something oppressed us; we did not dare to speak.  We went on a few paces and stopped, for we became aware that we were not alone.  Indeed, it seemed to me that we stood in the midst of a thronging multitude, but not of men and women.  Beings pressed about us; we could feel their robes, yet could not touch them; we could feel their breath, but it was cold.  The air stirred all round us as they passed to and fro, passed in endless numbers.  It was as though we had entered a cathedral filled with the vast congregation of all the dead who once had worshipped there.  We grew afraid—­my face was damp with fear, the hair stood up upon my head.  We seemed to have wandered into a hall of the Shades.

At length light appeared far away, and we saw that it emanated from the two pillars of fire which had burned on either side of the Shrine, that of a sudden became luminous.  So we were in the Sanctuary, and still near to the doors.  Now those pillars were not bright; they were low and lurid; the rays from them scarcely reached us standing in the dense shadow.

But if we could not be seen in them we still could see.  Look!  Yonder sat Ayesha on a throne, and oh! she was awful in her death-like majesty.  The blue light of the sunken columns played upon her, and in it she sat erect, with such a face and mien of pride as no human creature ever wore.  Power seemed to flow from her; yes, it flowed from those wide-set, glittering eyes like light from jewels.

She seemed a Queen of Death receiving homage from the dead.  More, she was receiving homage from dead or living—­I know not which—­for, as I thought it, a shadowy Shape arose before the throne and bent the knee to her, then another, and another, and another.