Not for many a day had I seen Leo look so vigorous and happy.  Of late he had grown somewhat thin and pale, probably from causes that I have suggested, but now his cheeks were red and his eyes shone bright again.  Ayesha also seemed joyous, for the moods of this strange woman were as fickle as those of Nature’s self, and varied as a landscape varies under the sunshine or the shadow.  Now she was noon and now dark night; now dawn, now evening, and now thoughts came and went in the blue depths of her eyes like vapours wafted across the summer sky, and in the press of them her sweet face changed and shimmered as broken water shimmers beneath the beaming stars.

“Too long,” she said, with a little thrilling laugh, “have I been shut in the bowels of sombre mountains, accompanied only by mutes and savages or by melancholy, chanting priests, and now I am glad to look upon the world again.  How beautiful are the snows above, and the brown slopes below, and the broad plains beyond that roll away to those bordering hills!  How glorious is the sun, eternal as myself; how sweet the keen air of heaven.

“Believe me, Leo, more than twenty centuries have gone by since I was seated on a steed, and yet thou seest I have not forgot my horsemanship, though this beast cannot match those Arabs that I rode in the wide deserts of Arabia.  Oh!  I remember how at my father’s side I galloped down to war against the marauding Bedouins, and how with my own hand I speared their chieftain and made him cry for mercy.  One day I will tell thee of that father of mine, for I was his darling, and though we have been long apart, I hold his memory dear and look forward to our meeting.

“See, yonder is the mouth of that gorge where lived the cat-worshipping sorcerer, who would have murdered both of you because thou, Leo, didst throw his familiar to the fire.  It is strange, but several of the tribes of this Mountain and of the lands behind it make cats their gods or divine by means of them.  I think that the first Rassen, the general of Alexander, must have brought the practice here from Egypt.  Of this Macedonian Alexander I could tell thee much, for he was almost a contemporary of mine, and when I last was born the world still rang with the fame of his great deeds.

“It was Rassen who on the Mountain supplanted the primeval fire-worship whereof the flaming pillars which light its Sanctuary remain as monuments, by that of Hes, or Isis, or rather blended the two in one.  Doubtless among the priests in his army were some of Pasht or Sekket the Cat-headed, and these brought with them their secret cult, that to-day has dwindled down to the vulgar divinations of savage sorcerers.  Indeed I remember dimly that it was so, for I was the first Hesea of this Temple, and journeyed hither with that same general Rassen, a relative of mine.”

Now both Leo and I looked at her wonderingly, and I could see that she was watching us through her veil.  As usual, however, it was I whom she reproved, since Leo might think and do what he willed and still escape her anger.