When I had satisfied myself, Leo was still at his meal, for loss of blood or the effects of the tremendous nerve tonic which Ayesha ordered to be administered to him, had made him ravenous.
I watched his face and became aware of a curious change in it, no immediate change indeed, but one, I think, that had come upon him gradually, although I only fully appreciated it now, after our short separation. In addition to the thinness of which I have spoken, his handsome countenance had grown more ethereal; his eyes were full of the shadows of things that were to come.
His aspect pained me, I knew not why. It was no longer that of the Leo with whom I was familiar, the deep-chested, mighty-limbed, jovial, upright traveller, hunter and fighting-man who had chanced to love and be loved of a spiritual power incarnated in a mould of perfect womanhood and armed with all the might of Nature’s self. These things were still present indeed, but the man was changed, and I felt sure that this change came from Ayesha, since the look upon his face had become exceeding like to that which often hovered upon hers at rest.
She also was watching him, with speculative, dreamy eyes, till presently, as some thought swept through her, I saw those eyes blaze up, and the red blood pour to cheek and brow. Yes, the mighty Ayesha whose dead, slain for him, lay strewn by the thousand on yonder plain, blushed and trembled like a maiden at her first lover’s kiss.
Leo rose from the table. “I would that I had been with thee in the fray,” he said.
“At the drift there was fighting,” she answered, “afterwards none. My ministers of Fire, Earth and Air smote, no more; I waked them from their sleep and at my command they smote for thee and saved thee.”
“Many lives to take for one man’s safety,” Leo said solemnly, as though the thought pained him.
“Had they been millions and not thousands, I would have spent them every one. On my head be their deaths, not on thine. Or rather on hers,” and she pointed to the dead Atene. “Yes, on hers who made this war. At least she should thank me who have sent so royal a host to guard her through the darkness.”
“Yet it is terrible,” said Leo, “to think of thee, beloved, red to the hair with slaughter.”
“What reck I?” she answered with a splendid pride. “Let their blood suffice to wash the stain of thy blood from off these cruel hands that once did murder thee.”
“Who am I that I should blame thee?” Leo went on as though arguing with himself, “I who but yesterday killed two men — to save myself from treachery.”
“Speak not of it,” she exclaimed in cold rage. “I saw the place and, Holly, thou knowest how I swore that a hundred lives should pay for every drop of that dear blood of thine, and I, who lie not, have kept the oath. Look now on that man who stands yonder struck by my will to stone, dead yet living, and say again what was he about to do to thee when I entered here?”
“To take vengeance on me for the doom of his queen and of her armies,” answered Leo, “and Ayesha, how knowest thou that a Power higher than thine own will not demand it yet?”
As he spoke a pale shadow flickered on Leo’s face, such a shadow as might fall from Death’s advancing wing, and in the fixed eyes of the Shaman there shone a stony smile.
For a moment terror seemed to take Ayesha, then it was gone as quickly as it came.
“Nay,” she said. “I ordain that it shall not be, and save One who listeth not, what power reigns in this wide earth that dare defy my will?”
So she spoke, and as her words of awful pride — for they were very awful — rang round that stone-built chamber, a vision came to me — Holly.
I saw illimitable space peopled with shining suns, and sunk in the infinite void above them one vast Countenance clad in a calm so terrific that at its aspect my spirit sank to nothingness. Yes, and I knew that this was Destiny enthroned above the spheres. Those lips moved and obedient worlds rushed upon their course. They moved again and these rolling chariots of the heavens were turned or stayed, appeared or disappeared. I knew also that against this calm Majesty the being, woman or spirit, at my side had dared to hurl her passion and her strength. My soul reeled. I was afraid.
The dread phantasm passed, and when my mind cleared again Ayesha was speaking in new, triumphant tones.
“Nay, nay,” she cried. “Past is the night of dread; dawns the day of victory! Look!” and she pointed through the window-places shattered by the hurricane, to the flaming town beneath, whence rose one continual wail of misery, the wail of women mourning their countless slain while the fire roared through their homes like some unchained and rejoicing demon. “Look Leo on the smoke of the first sacrifice that I offer to thy royal state and listen to its music. Perchance thou deemst it naught. Why then I’ll give thee others. Thou lovest war. Good! we will go down to war and the rebellious cities of the earth shall be the torches of our march.”
She paused a moment, her delicate nostrils quivering, and her face alight with the prescience of ungarnered splendours; then like a swooping swallow flitted to where, by dead Atene, the gold circlet fallen from the Khania’s hair lay upon the floor.
She stooped, lifted it, and coming to Leo held it high above his head. Slowly she let her hand fall until the glittering coronet rested for an instant on his brow. Then she spoke, in her glorious voice that rolled out rich and low, a very paean of triumph and of power.
“By this poor, earthly symbol I create thee King of Earth; yea in its round for thee is gathered all her rule. Be thou its king, and mine!”
Again the coronet was held aloft, again it sank, and again she said or rather chanted —“With this unbroken ring, token of eternity, I swear to thee the boon of endless days. Endure thou while the world endures, and be its lord, and mine.”
A third time the coronet touched his brow.
“By this golden round I do endow thee with Wisdom’s perfect gold uncountable, that is the talisman whereat all nature’s secret paths shall open to thy feet. Victorious, victorious, tread thou her wondrous ways with me, till from her topmost peak at last she wafts us to our immortal throne whereof the columns twain are Life and Death.”
Then Ayesha cast away the crown and lo! it fell upon the breast of the lost Atene and rested there.
“Art content with these gifts of mine, my lord?” she cried.
Leo looked at her sadly and shook his head.
“What more wilt thou then? Ask and I swear it shall be thine.”
“Thou swearest; but wilt thou keep the oath?”
“Aye, by myself I swear; by myself and by the Strength that bred me. If it be ought that I can grant — then if I refuse it to thee, may such destruction fall upon me as will satisfy even Atene’s watching soul.”
I heard and I think that another heard also, at least once more the stony smile shone in the eyes of the Shaman.
“I ask of thee nothing that thou canst not give. Ayesha, I ask of thee thyself — not at some distant time when I have been bathed in a mysterious fire, but now, now this night.”
She shrank back from him a little, as though dismayed.
“Surely,” she said slowly, “I am like that foolish philosopher who, walking abroad to read the destinies of nations in the stars, fell down a pitfall dug by idle children and broke his bones and perished there. Never did I guess that with all these glories stretched before thee like mountain top on glittering mountain top, making a stairway for thy mortal feet to the very dome of heaven, thou wouldst still clutch at thy native earth and seek of it — but the common boon of woman’s love.
“Oh! Leo, I thought that thy soul was set upon nobler aims, that thou wouldst pray me for wider powers, for a more vast dominion; that as though they were but yonder fallen door of wood and iron, I should break for thee the bars of Hades, and like the Eurydice of old fable draw thee living down the steeps of Death, or throne thee midst the fires of the furthest sun to watch its subject worlds at play.
“Or I thought that thou wouldst bid me reveal what no woman ever told, the bitter, naked truth — all my sins and sorrows, all the wandering fancies of my fickle thought; even what thou knowest not and perchance ne’er shalt know, who I am and whence I came , and how to thy charmed eyes I seemed to change from foul to fair, and what is the purpose of my love for thee, and what the meaning of that tale of an angry goddess — who never was except in dreams.
“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. If only for one short night forget the ambition that gnaws unceasingly at thy soul; I say forget thy greatness and be a woman and — my wife.”
She made no answer, only looked at him and shook her head, causing her glorious hair to ripple like water beneath a gentle breeze.
“Thou deniest me,” he went on with gathering strength, “and that thou canst not do, that thou mayest not do, for Ayesha, thou hast sworn, and I demand the fulfilment of thine oath.
“Hark thou. I refuse thy gifts; I will have none of thy rule who ask no Pharaoh’s throne and wish to do good to men and not to kill them — that the world may profit. I will not go with thee to Kor, nor be bathed in the breath of Life. I will leave thee and cross the mountains, ............