Every man has dreamed of perfect beauty, basing his ideas of it perhaps on that of some woman he has met who chanced to take his fancy, with a few accessories from splendid pictures or Greek statues thrown in, plus a garnishment of the imagination.  At any rate I have, and here was that perfect beauty multiplied by ten, such beauty, that at the sight of it the senses reeled.  And yet I repeat that it is not to be described.

I do not know what the nose or the lips were like; in fact, all that I can remember with distinctness is the splendour of the eyes, of which I had caught some hint through her veil on the previous night.  Oh, they were wondrous, those eyes, but I cannot tell their colour save that the groundwork of them was black.  Moreover they seemed to be more than eyes as we understand them.  They were indeed windows of the soul, out of which looked thought and majesty and infinite wisdom, mixed with all the allurements and the mystery that we are accustomed to see or to imagine in woman.

Here let me say something at once.  If this marvellous creature expected that the revelation of her splendour was going to make me her slave; to cause me to fall in love with her, as it is called, well, she must have been disappointed, for it had no such effect.  It frightened and in a sense humbled me, that is all, for I felt myself to be in the presence of something that was not human, something alien to me as a man, which I could fear and even adore as humanity would adore that which is Divine, but with which I had no desire to mix.  Moreover, was it divine, or was it something very different?  I did not know, I only knew that it was not for me; as soon should I have thought of asking for a star to set within my lantern.

I think that she felt this, felt that her stroke had missed, as the French say, that is if she meant to strike at all at this moment.  Of this I am not certain, for it was in a changed voice, one with a suspicion of chill in it that she said with a little laugh,

“Do you admit now, Allan, that a woman may be old and still remain fair and unwrinkled?”

“I admit,” I answered, although I was trembling so much that I could hardly speak with steadiness, “that a woman may be splendid and lovely beyond anything that the mind of man can conceive, whatever her age, of which I know nothing.  I would add this, Ayesha, that I thank you very much for having revealed to me the glory that is hid beneath your veil.”

“Why?” she asked, and I thought that I detected curiosity in her question.

“For this reason, Ayesha.  Now there is no fear of my troubling you in such a fashion as you seemed to dread a little while ago.  As soon would a man desire to court the moon sailing in her silver loveliness through heaven.”

“The moon!  It is strange that you should compare me to the moon,” she said musingly.  “Do you know that the moon was a great goddess in Old Egypt and that her name was Isis and—­well, once I had to do with Isis?  Perhaps you were there and knew it, since more lives than one are given to most of us.  I must search and learn.  For the rest, all have not thought as you do, Allan.  Many, on the contrary, love and seek to win the Divine.”