“So,” Ayesha went on, “the thing is done and the number summed for aye, though it be hidden from my sight.  I have made an end of doubts and fears, and come death, come life, I’ll meet it bravely.

“Say, how shall we be wed?  I have it.  Holly here must join our hands; who else?  He that ever was our guide shall give me unto thee, and thee to me.  This burning city is our altar, the dead and living are our witnesses on earth and heaven.  In place of rites and ceremonials for this first time I lay my lips on thine, and when ’tis done, for music I’ll sing thee a nuptial chant of love such as mortal poet has not written nor have mortal lovers heard.

“Come, Holly, do now thy part and give this maiden to this man.”

Like one in a dream I obeyed her and took Ayesha’s outstretched hand and Leo’s.  As I held them thus, I tell the truth:—­it was as though some fire rushed through my veins from her to him, shaking and shattering me with swift waves of burning and unearthly Bliss.  With the fire too came glorious visions and sounds of mighty music, and a sense as though my brain, filled with over-flowing life, must burst asunder beneath its weight.

I joined their hands; I know not how; I blessed them, I know not in what words.  Then I reeled back against the wall and watched.

This is what I saw.

With an abandonment and a passion so splendid and intense that it seemed more than human, with a murmured cry of “Husband!” Ayesha cast her arms about her lover’s neck and drawing down his head to hers so that the gold hair was mingled with her raven locks, she kissed him on the lips.

Thus they clung a little while, and as they clung the gentle diadem of light from her brow spread to his brow also, and through the white wrappings of her robe became visible her perfect shape shining with faint fire.  With a little happy laugh she left him, saying,

“Thus, Leo Vincey, oh! thus for the second time do I give myself to thee, and with this flesh and spirit all I swore to thee, there in the dim Caves of Kor and here in the palace of Kaloon.  Know thou this, come what may, never, never more shall we be separate who are ordained one.  Whilst thou livest I live at thy side, and when thou diest, if die thy must, I’ll follow thee through worlds and firmaments, nor shall all the doors of heaven or hell avail against my love.  Where thou goest, thither I will go.  When thou sleepest, with thee will I sleep and it is my voice that thou shalt hear murmuring through the dreams of life and death; my voice that shall summon thee to awaken in the last hour of everlasting dawn, when all this night of misery hath furled her wings for aye.

“Listen now while I sing to thee and hear that song aright, for in its melody at length thou shalt learn the truth, which unwed I might not tell to thee.  Thou shalt learn who and what I am, and who and what thou art, and of the high purposes of our love, and this dead woman’s hate, and of all that I have hid from thee in veiled, bewildering words and visions.