When I took hold of it first my arm shook slightly with excitement, and those bells began to sound; a sweet, faint music like to that of chimes heard far away at night in the silence of the sea.  I thought too, but perhaps this was fancy, that a thrill passed from the hallowed and beautiful thing into my body.

On the mystery itself, as it is recorded in the manuscript, I make no comment.  Of it and its inner significations every reader must form his or her own judgment.  One thing alone is clear to me—­on the hypothesis that Mr. Holly tells the truth as to what he and Leo Vincey saw and experienced, which I at least believe—­that though sundry interpretations of this mystery were advanced by Ayesha and others, none of them are quite satisfactory.

Indeed, like Mr. Holly, I incline to the theory that She, if I may still call her by that name although it is seldom given to her in these pages, put forward some of them, such as the vague Isis-myth, and the wondrous picture-story of the Mountain-fire, as mere veils to hide the truth which it was her purpose to reveal at last in that song she never sang.

The Editor.

AYESHA

The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed

CHAPTER I

THE DOUBLE SIGN

Hard on twenty years have gone by since that night of Leo’s vision—­the most awful years, perhaps, which were ever endured by men—­twenty years of search and hardship ending in soul-shaking wonder and amazement.

My death is very near to me, and of this I am glad, for I desire to pursue the quest in other realms, as it has been promised to me that I shall do.  I desire to learn the beginning and the end of the spiritual drama of which it has been my strange lot to read some pages upon earth.

I, Ludwig Horace Holly, have been very ill; they carried me, more dead than alive, down those mountains whose lowest slopes I can see from my window, for I write this on the northern frontiers of India.  Indeed any other man had long since perished, but Destiny kept my breath in me, perhaps that a record might remain.  I, must bide here a month or two till I am strong enough to travel homewards, for I have a fancy to die in the place where I was born.  So while I have strength I will put the story down, or at least those parts of it that are most essential, for much can, or at any rate must, be omitted.  I shrink from attempting too long a book, though my notes and memory would furnish me with sufficient material for volumes.

I will begin with the Vision.

After Leo Vincey and I came back from Africa in 1885, desiring solitude, which indeed we needed sorely to recover from the fearful shock we had experienced, and to give us time and opportunity to think, we went to an old house upon the shores of Cumberland that has belonged to my family for many generations.  This house, unless somebody has taken it believing me to be dead, is still my property and thither I travel to die.