We rose and bathed, then saying that
we wished to be alone, went together into the garden where even at
this altitude, now, at the end of August, the air was still mild and
pleasant. Behind a rock by a bed of campanulas and other mountain
flowers and ferns, was a bench near to the banks of a little stream, on
which we seated ourselves.
"What have you to say, Horace?" asked Leo laying his hand upon my arm.
"Say?" I answered. "That things have come about most marvellously; that
we have dreamed aright and laboured not in vain; that you are the most
fortunate of men and should be the most happy."
He looked at me somewhat strangely, and answered--"Yes, of course;
she is lovely, is she not--but," and his voice dropped to its lowest
whisper, "I wish, Horace, that Ayesha were a little more human, even as
human as she was in the Caves of Kor. I don't think she is quite flesh
and blood, I felt it when she kissed me--if you can call it a kiss--for
she barely touched my hair. Indeed how can she be who changed thus in an
hour? Flesh and blood are not born of flame, Horace."
"Are you sure that she was so born?" I asked. "Like the visions on the
fire, may not that hideous shape have been but an illusion of our minds?
May she not be still the same Ayesha whom we knew in Kor, not re-born,
but wafted hither by some mysterious agency?"
"Perhaps.
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