"
"Aye, Leo, but how long? Why wert thou sole lord of this loveliness of
mine and not set above their harming, night and day a hundred jealous
daggers would seek thy heart and--find it."
"How long, Ayesha? A lifetime, a year, a month, a minute--I neither know
nor care, and while thou art true to me I fear no stabs of envy."
"Is it so? Wilt take the risk? I can promise thee nothing. Thou
mightest--yes, in this way or in that, thou mightest--die."
"And if I die, what then? Shall we be separated?"
"Nay, nay, Leo, that is not possible. We never can be severed, of this
I am sure; it is sworn to me. But then through other lives and other
spheres, higher lives and higher spheres mayhap, our fates must force a
painful path to their last goal of union."
"Why then I take the hazard, Ayesha. Shall the life that I can risk to
slay a leopard or a lion in the sport of an idle hour, be too great a
price to offer for the splendours of thy breast? Thine oath! Ayesha, I
claim thine oath."
Then it was that in Ayesha there began the most mysterious and thrilling
of her many changes. Yet how to describe it I know not unless it be by
simile.
Once in Thibet we were imprisoned for months by snows that stretched
down from the mountain slopes into the valleys and oh! how weary did we
grow of those arid, aching fields of purest white.
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