"And if once there lived a woman who was mad with the thirst for beauty,
for life, for wisdom, and for love, might she not--oh! might she not
perchance----"
"Sell herself to the god called Set, or one of his angels? Ayesha,
dost thou mean"--and Leo rose, speaking in a voice that was full of
fear--"that thou art such a woman?"
"And if so?" she asked, also rising and drawing slowly near to him.
"If so," he answered hoarsely, "if so, I think that perhaps we had best
fulfil our fates apart----"
"Ah!" she said, with a little scream of pain as though a knife had
stabbed her, "wouldst thou away to Atene? I tell thee that thou canst
not leave me. I have power--above all men thou shouldst know it, whom
once I slew. Nay, thou hast no memory, poor creature of a breath, and
I--I remember too well. I will not hold thee dead again--I'll hold
thee living. Look now on my beauty, Leo"--and she bent her swaying
form towards him, compelling him with her glorious, alluring eyes--"and
begone if thou canst. Why, thou drawest nearer to me. Man, that is not
the path of flight.
"Nay, I will not tempt thee with these common lures. Go, Leo, if thou
wilt. Go, my love, and leave me to my loneliness and my sin. Now--at
once. Atene will shelter thee till spring, when thou canst cross the
mountains and return to thine own world again, and to those things of
common life which are thy joy.
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