troubling you in such a fashion as you seemed to dread a little while ago. As soon would a man desire to court the moon sailing in her silver loveliness through heaven.
The moon! It is strange that you should compare me to the moon,
she said musingly. Do you know that the moon was a great goddess in Old Egypt and that her name was Isis and—well, once I had to do with Isis? Perhaps you were there and knew it, since more lives than one are given to most of us. I must search and learn. For the rest, all have not thought as you do, Allan. Many, on the contrary, love and seek to win the Divine.
So do I at a distance, O 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, O 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 here 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, O 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.
Have you heard, O Allan, that among the wise some hold that not all of us is visible at once here on earth within the
