“All wicked folk do as much in this form or in that,” he answered.

“And if once there lived a woman who was mad with the thirst for beauty, for life, for wisdom, and for love, might she not—­oh! might she not perchance——­”

“Sell herself to the god called Set, or one of his angels?  Ayesha, dost thou mean”—­and Leo rose, speaking in a voice that was full of fear—­“that thou art such a woman?”

“And if so?” she asked, also rising and drawing slowly near to him.

“If so,” he answered hoarsely, “if so, I think that perhaps we had best fulfil our fates apart——­”

“Ah!” she said, with a little scream of pain as though a knife had stabbed her, “wouldst thou away to Atene?  I tell thee that thou canst not leave me.  I have power—­above all men thou shouldst know it, whom once I slew.  Nay, thou hast no memory, poor creature of a breath, and I—­I remember too well.  I will not hold thee dead again—­I’ll hold thee living.  Look now on my beauty, Leo”—­and she bent her swaying form towards him, compelling him with her glorious, alluring eyes—­“and begone if thou canst.  Why, thou drawest nearer to me.  Man, that is not the path of flight.

“Nay, I will not tempt thee with these common lures.  Go, Leo, if thou wilt.  Go, my love, and leave me to my loneliness and my sin.  Now—­at once.  Atene will shelter thee till spring, when thou canst cross the mountains and return to thine own world again, and to those things of common life which are thy joy.  See, Leo, I veil myself that thou mayest not be tempted,” and she flung the corner of her cloak about her head, then asked a sudden question through it—­“Didst thou not but now return to the Sanctuary with Holly after I bade thee leave me there alone?  Methought I saw the two of you standing by its doors.”

“Yes, we came to seek thee,” he answered.

“And found more than ye sought, as often chances to the bold—­is it not so?  Well, I willed that ye should come and see, and protected you where others might have died.”

“What didst thou there upon the throne, and whose were those forms which we saw bending before thee?” he asked coldly.

“I have ruled in many shapes and lands, Leo.  Perchance they were ancient companions and servitors of mine come to greet me once again and to hear my tidings.  Or perchance they were but shadows of thy brain, pictures like those upon the fire, that it pleased me to summon to thy sight, to try thy strength and constancy.

“Leo Vincey, know now the truth; that all things are illusions, even that there exists no future and no past, that what has been and what shall be already is eternally.  Know that I, Ayesha, am but a magic wraith, foul when thou seest me foul, fair when thou seest me fair; a spirit-bubble reflecting a thousand lights in the sunshine of thy smile, grey as dust and gone in the shadow of thy frown.  Think of the throned Queen before whom the shadowy Powers