Know thou this, come
what may, never, never more shall we be separate who are ordained one.
Whilst thou livest I live at thy side, and when thou diest, if die thy
must, I'll follow thee through worlds and firmaments, nor shall all the
doors of heaven or hell avail against my love. Where thou goest, thither
I will go. When thou sleepest, with thee will I sleep and it is my voice
that thou shalt hear murmuring through the dreams of life and death; my
voice that shall summon thee to awaken in the last hour of everlasting
dawn, when all this night of misery hath furled her wings for aye.
"Listen now while I sing to thee and hear that song aright, for in its
melody at length thou shalt learn the truth, which unwed I might not
tell to thee. Thou shalt learn who and what _I_ am, and who and what
_thou_ art, and of the high purposes of our love, and this dead woman's
hate, and of all that I have hid from thee in veiled, bewildering words
and visions.
"Listen then, my love and lord, to the burden of the Song of Fate."
She ceased speaking and gazed heavenwards with a rapt look as though she
waited for some inspiration to fall upon her, and never, never--not even
in the fires of Kor had Ayesha seemed so divine as she did now in this
moment of the ripe harvest of her love.
My eyes wandered from her to Leo, who stood before her pale and still,
still as the death-like figure of the Shaman, still as the Khania's
icy shape which stared upwards from the ground.
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