Now for your tale."
"It is interesting, but not very long," he answered, colouring. "I went
to sleep, and when I woke it was to find a beautiful woman leaning over
me, and Horace--at first I thought that it was--you know who, and that
she kissed me; but perhaps it was all a dream."
"It was no dream," I answered. "I saw it."
"I am sorry to hear it--very sorry. At any rate there was the beautiful
woman--the Khania--for I saw her plenty of times afterwards, and talked
to her in my best modern Greek--by the way, Ayesha knew the old Greek;
that's curious."
"She knew several of the ancient tongues, and so did other people. Go
on."
"Well, she nursed me very kindly, but, so far as I know, until last
night there was nothing more affectionate, and I had sense enough to
refuse to talk about our somewhat eventful past. I pretended not to
understand, said that we were explorers, etc., and kept asking her where
you were, for I forgot to say I found that you had gone. I think that
she grew rather angry with me, for she wanted to know something, and, as
you can guess, I wanted to know a good deal. But I could get nothing out
of her except that she was the Khania--a person in authority. There was
no doubt about that, for when one of those slaves or servants came in
and interrupted her while she was trying to draw the facts out of me,
she called to some of her people to throw him out of the window, and he
only saved himself by going down the stairs very quickly.
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