“By Nature’s self!” she cried; “wert thou not my friend, Holly, the fool whom it pleases me to cherish, I would bind that right hand of thine in those secret rays till the very bones within it were turned to gold.  Nay, why should I be vexed with thee, who art both blind and deaf?  Yet thou shalt be persuaded,” and leaving us, she passed down the passages, called something to the priests who were labouring in the workshop, then returned to us.

Presently they followed her, carrying on a kind of stretcher between them an ingot of iron ore that seemed to be as much as they could lift.

“Now,” she said, “how wilt thou that I mark this mass which as thou must admit is only iron?  With the sign of Life?  Good,” and at her bidding the priests took cold-chisels and hammers and roughly cut upon its surface the symbol of the looped cross—­the crux ansata.

“It is not enough,” she said when they had finished.  “Holly, lend me that knife of thine, to-morrow I will return it to thee, and of more value.”

So I drew my hunting knife, an Indian-made thing, that had a handle of plated iron, and gave it her.

“Thou knowest the marks on it,” and she pointed to various dents and to the maker’s name upon the blade; for though the hilt was Indian work the steel was of Sheffield manufacture.

I nodded.  Then she bade the priests put on the ray-proof armour that we had discarded, and told us to go without the chamber and lie in the darkness of the passage with our faces against the floor.

This we did, and remained so until, a few minutes later, she called us again.  We rose and returned into the chamber to find the priests, who had removed the protecting garments, gasping and rubbing the salve upon their eyes; to find also that the lump of iron ore and my knife were gone.  Next she commanded them to place the block of gold-coloured metal upon their stretcher and to bring it with them.  They obeyed, and we noted that, although those priests were both of them strong men they groaned beneath its weight.

“How came it,” said Leo, “that thou, a woman, couldst carry what these men find so heavy?”

“It is one of the properties of that force which thou callest fire,” she answered sweetly, “to make what has been exposed to it, if for a little while only, as light as thistle-down.  Else, how could I, who am so frail, have borne yonder block of gold?”

“Quite so!  I understand now,” answered Leo.

Well, that was the end of it.  The lump of metal was hid away in a kind of rock pit, with an iron cover, and we returned to Ayesha’s apartments.

“So all wealth is thine, as well as all power,” said Leo, presently, for remembering Ayesha’s awful threat I scarcely dared to open my mouth.

“It seems so,” she answered wearily, “since centuries ago I discovered that great secret, though until ye came I had put it to no use.  Holly here, after his common fashion, believes that this is magic, but I tell thee again that there is no magic, only knowledge which I have chanced to win.”