“So she will remain for this night and that day which follows,” said Ayesha, “and when she wakes it will be, I think, to believe herself once more a happy child.  Not until she sees her home again will she find her womanhood, and then all this story will be forgotten by her.  Of her father you must tell her that he died when you went out to hunt the river-beasts together, and if she seeks for certain others, that they have gone away.  But I think that she will ask little more when she learns that he is dead, since I have laid that command upon her soul.”

“Hypnotic suggestion,” thought I to myself, “and I only hope to heaven that it will work.”

Ayesha seemed to guess what was passing through my mind, for she nodded and said,

“Have no fear, Allan, for I am what the black axe-bearer and the little yellow man called a ‘witch’ which means, as you who are instructed know, one who has knowledge of medicine and other things and who holds a key to some of the mysteries that lie hid in Nature.”

“For instance,” I suggested, “of how to transport yourself into a battle at the right moment, and out of it again—­also at the right moment.”

“Yes, Allan, since watching from afar, I saw that those Amahagger curs were about to flee and that I was needed there to hearten them and to put fear into the army of Rezu.  So I came.”

“But how did you come, Ayesha?”

She laughed as she answered,

“Perhaps I did not come at all.  Perhaps you only thought I came; since I seemed to be there the rest matters nothing.”

As I still looked unconvinced she went on,

“Oh! foolish man, seek not to learn of that which is too high for you.  Yet listen.  You in your ignorance suppose that the soul dwells within the body, do you not?”

I answered that I had always been under this impression.

“Yet, Allan, it is otherwise, for the body dwells within the soul.”

“Like the pearl in an oyster,” I suggested.

“Aye, in a sense, since the pearl which to you is beautiful, is to the oyster a sickness and a poison, and so is the body to the soul whose temple it troubles and defiles.  Yet round it is the white and holy soul that ever seeks to bring the vile body to its own purity and colour, yet oft-times fails.  Learn, Allan, that flesh and spirit are the deadliest foes joined together by a high decree that they may forget their hate and perfect each other, or failing, be separate to all eternity, the spirit going to its own place and the flesh to its corruption.”

“A strange theory,” I said.

“Aye, Allan, and one which is so new to you that never will you understand it.  Yet it is true and I set it out for this reason.  The soul of man, being at liberty and not cooped within his narrow breast, is in touch with that soul of the Universe, which men know as God Whom they call by many names.  Therefore it has all knowledge and perhaps all power, and at times the body within it, if it be a wise body, can draw from this well of knowledge and abounding power.  So at least can I. And now you will understand why I am so good a doctoress and how I came to appear in the battle, as you said, at the right time, and to leave it when my work was done.”