“Then it was all a dream?” I interrupted.

“Is not everything a dream, even life itself, Allan?  If so, what can this be that thou hast seen, but a dream within a dream, and itself containing other dreams, as in the old days the ball fashioned by the eastern workers of ivory would oft be found to contain another ball, and this yet another and another and another, till at the inmost might be found a bead of gold, or perchance a jewel, which was the prize of him who could draw out ball from ball and leave them all unbroken.  That search was difficult and rarely was the jewel come by, if at all, so that some said there was none, save in the maker’s mind.  Yes, I have seen a man go crazed with seeking and die with the mystery unsolved.  How much harder, then, is it to come at the diamond of Truth which lies at the core of all our nest of dreams and without which to rest upon they could not be fashioned to seem realities?”

“But was it really a dream, and if so, what were the truth and the lesson?” I asked, determined not to allow her to bemuse or escape me with her metaphysical talk and illustrations.

“The first question has been answered, Allan, as well as I can answer, who am not the architect of this great globe of dreams, and as yet cannot clearly see the ineffable gem within, whose prisoned rays illuminate their substance, though so dimly that only those with the insight of a god can catch their glamour in the night of thought, since to most they are dark as glow-flies in the glare of noon.”

“Then what are the truth and the lesson?” I persisted, perceiving that it was hopeless to extract from her an opinion as to the real nature of my experiences and that I must content myself with her deductions from them.

“Thou tellest me, Allan, that in thy dream or vision thou didst seem to appear before thyself seated on a throne and in that self to find thy judge.  That is the Truth whereof I spoke, though how it found its way through the black and ignorant shell of one whose wit is so small, is more than I can guess, since I believed that it was revealed to me alone.”

(Now I, Allan, thought to myself that I began to see the origin of all these fantasies and that for once Ayesha had made a slip.  If she had a theory and I developed that same theory in a hypnotic condition, it was not difficult to guess its fount.  However, I kept my mouth shut, and luckily for once she did not seem to read my mind, perhaps because she was too much occupied in spinning her smooth web of entangling words.)

“All men worship their own god,” she went on, “and yet seem not to know that this god dwells within them and that of him they are a part.  There he dwells and there they mould him to their own fashion, as the potter moulds his clay, though whatever the shape he seems to take beneath their fingers, still he remains the god infinite and unalterable.  Still he is the Seeker and the Sought, the Prayer and its Fulfilment, the Love and the Hate, the Virtue and the Vice, since all these qualities the alchemy of his spirit turns into an ultimate and eternal Good.  For the god is in all things and all things are in the god, whom men clothe with such diverse garments and whose countenance they hide beneath so many masks.