What was passing in his
mind, I wondered, that he could remain thus insensible while in all her
might and awful beauty this proud being worshipped him.
Hark! she began to sing in a voice so rich and perfect that its honied
notes seemed to cloy my blood and stop my breath.
"The world was not, was not, and in the womb of Silence
Slept the souls of men. Yet I was and thou----"
Suddenly Ayesha stopped, and I felt rather than saw the horror on her
face.
Look! Leo swayed to and fro as though the stones beneath him were but
a rocking boat. To and fro he swayed, stretched out his blind arms to
clasp her--then suddenly fell backwards, and lay still.
Oh! what a shriek was that she gave! Surely it must have wakened the
very corpses upon the plain. Surely it must have echoed in the stars.
One shriek only--then throbbing silence.
I sprang to him, and there, withered in Ayesha's kiss, slain by the fire
of her love, Leo lay dead--lay dead upon the breast of dead Atene!
CHAPTER XXIV
THE PASSING OF AYESHA
I heard Ayesha say presently, and the words struck me as dreadful
in their hopeless acceptance of a doom against which even she had no
strength to struggle.
"It seems that my lord has left me for awhile; I must hasten to my lord
afar."
After that I do not quite know what happened. I had lost the man who was
all in all to me, friend and child in one, and I was crushed as I had
never been before.
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