"I thought--nay, no matter what I thought, save that thou wert far other
than thou art, my Leo, and in so high a moment that thou wouldst seek to
pass the mystic gates my glory can throw wide and with me tread an air
supernal to the hidden heart of things. Yet thy prayer is but the same
that the whole world whispers beneath the silent moon, in the palace and
the cottage, among the snows and on the burning desert's waste. 'Oh! my
love, thy lips, thy lips. Oh! my love, be mine, now, now, beneath the
moon, beneath the moon!'
"Leo, I thought better, higher, of thee."
"Mayhap, Ayesha, thou wouldest have thought worse of me had I been
content with thy suns and constellations and spiritual gifts and
dominations that I neither desire nor understand.
"If I had said to thee: Be thou my angel, not my wife; divide the ocean
that I may walk its bed; pierce the firmament and show me how grow the
stars; tell me the origins of being and of death and instruct me in
their issues; give up the races of mankind to my sword, and the wealth
of all the earth to fill my treasuries. Teach me also how to drive
the hurricane as thou canst do, and to bend the laws of nature to my
purpose: on earth make me half a god--as thou art.
"But Ayesha, I am no god; I am a man, and as a man I seek the woman whom
I love. Oh! divest thyself of all these wrappings of thy power--that
power which strews thy path with dead and keeps me apart from thee.
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