All this while she went on talking, but of what she said I have not the faintest idea, because my remaining wits were absorbed in these much-needed implorations.

Presently, of a sudden, I appeared to see Ayesha seated in a temple, for there were columns about her, and behind her was an altar on which a fire burned.  All round her, too, were hooded snakes like to that which she wore about her middle, fashioned in gold.  To these snakes she sang and they danced to her singing; yes, with flickering tongues they danced upon their tails!  What the scene signified I cannot conceive, unless it meant that this mistress of magic was consulting her familiars.

Then that vision vanished and Ayesha’s voice began to seem very far away and dreamy, also her wondrous beauty became visible to me through her veil, as though I had acquired a new sense that overcame the limitations of mortal sight.  Even in this extremity I reflected it was well that the last thing I looked on should be something so glorious.  No, not quite the last thing, for out of the corners of my eyes I saw that Umslopogaas from a sitting position had sunk on to his back and lay, apparently dead, with his axe still gripped tightly and held above his head, as though his arm had been turned to ice.

After this terrible things began to happen to me and I became aware that I was dying.  A great wind seemed to catch me up and blow me to and fro, as a leaf is blown in the eddies of a winter gale.  Enormous rushes of darkness flowed over me, to be succeeded by vivid bursts of brightness that dazzled like lightning.  I fell off precipices and at the foot of them was caught by some fearful strength and tossed to the very skies.

From those skies I was hurled down again into a kind of whirlpool of inky night, round which I spun perpetually, as it seemed for hours and hours.  But worst of all was the awful loneliness from which I suffered.  It seemed to me as though there were no other living thing in all the Universe and never had been and never would be any other living thing.  I felt as though I were the Universe rushing solitary through space for ages upon ages in a frantic search for fellowship, and finding none.

Then something seemed to grip my throat and I knew that I had died—­for the world floated away from beneath me.

Now fear and every mortal sensation left me, to be replaced by a new and spiritual terror.  I, or rather my disembodied consciousness, seemed to come up for judgment, and the horror of it was that I appeared to be my own judge.  There, a very embodiment of cold justice, my Spirit, grown luminous, sat upon a throne and to it, with dread and merciless particularity I set out all my misdeeds.  It was as if some part of me remained mortal, for I could see my two eyes, my mouth and my hands, but nothing else—­and strange enough they looked.  From the eyes came tears, from the mouth flowed words and the hands were joined, as though in prayer to that throned and adamantine Spirit which was ME.