“Verily, Leo,” she said, “to thee, yes; and to Holly here I must seem as some madcap girl blown to and fro by every wind of fancy, and building me a palace wherein to dwell out of dew and vapours, or from the substance of the sunset fires.  Thinkest thou then that I would enter on this war—­one woman against all the world”—­and as she spoke her shape grew royal and in her awful eyes there came a look that chilled my blood—­“and make no preparation for its necessities?  Why, since last we spoke upon this matter, foreseeing all, I have considered in my mind, and now thou shalt learn how, without cost to those we rule—­and for that reason alone shall they love us dearly—­I will glut the treasuries of the Empress of the Earth.

“Dost remember, Leo, how in Kor I found but a single pleasure during all those weary ages—­that of forcing my mother Nature one by one to yield me up her choicest secrets; I, who am a student of all things which are and of the forces that cause them to be born.  Now follow me, both of you, and ye shall look on what mortal eyes have not yet beheld.”

“What are we to see?” I asked doubtfully, having a lively recollection of Ayesha’s powers as a chemist.

“That thou shalt learn, or shalt not learn if it pleases thee to stay behind.  Come, Leo, my love, my love, and leave this wise philosopher first to find his riddle and next to guess it.”

Then turning her back to me she smiled on him so sweetly that although really he was more loth to go than I, Leo would have followed her through a furnace door, as indeed, had he but known it, he was about to do.

So they started, and I accompanied them since with Ayesha it was useless to indulge in any foolish pride, or to make oneself a victim to consistency.  Also I was anxious to see her new marvel, and did not care to rely for an account of it upon Leo’s descriptive skill, which at its best was never more than moderate.

She took us down passages that we had not passed before, to a door which she signed to Leo to open.  He obeyed, and from the cave within issued a flood of light.  As we guessed at once, the place was her laboratory, for about it stood metal flasks and various strange-shaped instruments.  Moreover, there was a furnace in it, one of the best conceivable, for it needed neither fuel nor stoking, whose gaseous fires, like those of the twisted columns in the Sanctuary, sprang from the womb of the volcano beneath our feet.

When we entered two priests were at work there:  one of them stirring a cauldron with an iron rod and the other receiving its molten contents into a mould of clay.  They stopped to salute Ayesha, but she bade them to continue their task, asking them if all went well.

“Very well, O Hes,” they answered; and we passed through that cave and sundry doors and passages to a little chamber cut in the rock.  There was no lamp or flame of fire in it, and yet the place was filled with a gentle light which seemed to flow from the opposing wall.