“So do I at a distance, Ayesha, but to come too near to it I do not aspire.  If I did perhaps I might be consumed.”

“You have wisdom,” she replied, not without a note of admiration in her voice.  “The moths are few that fear the flame, but those are the moths which live.  Also I think that you have scorched your wings before and learned that fire hurts.  Indeed, now I remember that I have heard of three such fires of love through which you have flown, Allan, though all of them are dead ashes now, or shine elsewhere.  Two burned in your youth when a certain lady died to save you, a great woman that, is it not so?  And the third, ah! she was fire indeed, though of a copper hue.  What was her name?  I cannot remember, but I think it had something to do with the wind, yes, with the wind when it wails.”

I stared at her.  Was this Mameena myth to be dug up again in a secret place in the heart of Africa?  And how the deuce did she know anything about Mameena?  Could she have been questioning Hans or Umslopogaas?  No, it was not possible, for she had never seen them out of my presence.

“Perhaps,” she went on in a mocking voice, “perhaps once again you disbelieve, Allan, whose cynic mind is so hard to open to new truths.  Well, shall I show you the faces of these three?  I can,” and she waved her hand towards some object that stood on a tripod to the right of her in the shadow—­it looked like a crystal basin.  “But what would it serve when you who know them so well, believed that I drew their pictures out of your own soul?  Also perchance but one face would appear and that one strange to you. [Lady Ragnall perhaps?—­JB]

“Have you heard, Allan, that among the wise some hold that not all of us is visible at once here on earth within the same house of flesh; that the whole self in its home above, separates itself into sundry parts, each of which walks the earth in different form, a segment of life’s circle that can never be dissolved and must unite again at last?”

I shook my head blankly, for I had never heard anything of the sort.

“You have still much to learn, Allan, although doubtless there are some who think you wise,” she went on in the same mocking voice.  “Well, I hold that this doctrine is built upon a rock of truth; also,” she added after studying me for a minute, “that in your case these three women do not complete that circle.  I think there is a fourth who as yet is strange to you in this life, though you have known her well enough in others.”

I groaned, imagining that she alluded to herself, which was foolish of me, for at once she read my mind and went on with a rather acid little laugh,

“No, no, not the humble slave who sits before you, whom, as you have told me, it would please you to reject as unworthy were she brought to you in offering, as in the old days was done at the courts of the great kings of the East.  O fool, fool! who hold yourself so strong and do not know that if I chose, before yon shadow had moved a finger’s breadth, I could bring you to my feet, praying that you might be suffered to kiss my robe, yes, just the border of my robe.”