第64章

I closed my eyelids, and imagination taking up the thread of thought shot its swift shuttle back across the ages, weaving a picture on their blackness so real and vivid in its detail that I could almost for a moment think that I had triumphed o'er the Past, and that my spirit's eyes had pierced the mystery of Time.

I seemed to see this fair girl-formthe yellow hair streaming down her, glittering against her garments snowy-white, and the bosom that was whiter than the robes, even dimming with its lustre her ornaments of burnished gold.I seemed to see the great cave filled with warriors, bearded and clad in mail, and, on the lighted dais where Ayesha had given judgment, a man standing, robed, and surrounded by the symbols of his priestly office.And up the cave there came one clad in purple, and before him and behind him came minstrels and fait maidens, chanting a wedding song.

White stood the maid against the altar, fairer than the fairest therepurer than a lily, and more cold than the dew that glistens in its heart.But as the man drew near she shuddered.Then out of the press and throng there sprang a dark-haired youth, and put his arm about this long-forgotten maid, and kissed her pale face in which the blood shot up like lights of the red dawn across the silent sky.And next there was turmoil and uproar, and a flashing of swords, and they tore the youth from her arms, and stabbed him, but with a cry she snatched the dagger from his belt, and drove it into her snowy breast, home to the heart, and down she fell, and then, with cries and wailing, and every sound of lamentation, the pageant rolled away from the arena of my vision, and once more the Past shut to its book.

Let him who reads forgive the intrusion of a dream into a history of fact.But it come so home to meIsaw it all so clear in a moment, as it were; and, besides, who shall say what proportion of factpast, present, or to come, may lie in the imagination? What is imagination? Perhaps it is the shadow of the intangible truth, perhaps it is the soul's thought.

In an instant the whole thing had passed through my brain, and _i_ She _i_ was addressing me.

"Behold the lot of man," said the veiled Ayesha, as she drew the winding sheets back over the dead lovers, speaking in a solemn, thrilling voice, which accorded well with the dream that I had dreamed: "to the tomb, and to the forgetfulness that hides the tomb, must we all come at last! Ay, even I who live so long.Even for me, O Holly, thousands upon thousands of years hence; thousands of years after thou hast gone through the gate and been lost in the mists, a day will dawn whereon I shall die, and be even as thou and these are.And then what will avail that I have lived a little longer, holding off death by the knowledge Ihave wrung from nature, since at last I too must die?

What is a span of ten thousand years, or ten times ten thousand years, in the history of time? It is as naughtit is as the mists that roll up in the sunlight; it fleeth away like an hour of sleep or a breath of the Eternal Spirit.Behold the lot of man!

Certainly it shall overtake us, and we shall sleep.

Certainly, too, we shall awake, and live again and again shall sleep, and so on and on, through periods, spaces, and times, from aeon unto aeon, till the world is dead, and the worlds beyond the world are dead, and naught liveth save the Spirit that is Life.But for us twain and for these dead ones shall the end of ends be Life, or shall it be Death? As yet Death is but Life's Night, but out of the Night is the Morrow born again, and both again beget the Night.Only when Day and Night, and Life and Death, are ended and swallowed up in that from which they came, what shall be our fate, O Holly? Who can see so far? Not even I!"And then, with a sudden change of tone and manner"Hast thou seen enough, my stranger guest, or shall Ishow thee more of the wonders of these tombs that are my palace halls? If thou wilt, I can lead thee to where Tisno, the mightiest and most valorous King of Ko^r, in whose day these caves were ended, lies in a pomp that seems to mock at nothingness, and bid the empty shadows of the past do homage to his sculptured vanity!""I have seen enough, O queen," I answered."My heart is overwhelmed by the power of the present Death.

Mortality is weak, and easily broken down by a sense of the companionship that waits upon its end.Take me hence, O Ayesha!"