I rose, and sank on the cushioned couch beside her, yet quivering with emotion, though for a moment my mad passion had left me, as the leaves of a tree quiver still, although the gust be gone that stirred them.  I did not dare to tell her that I had seen her in that deep and hellish mood, muttering incantations to the fire in the tomb.

“So,” she went on, “now eat some fruit; believe me, it is the only true food for man.  Oh, tell me of the philosophy of that Hebrew Messiah, who came after me, and who thou sayest doth now rule Rome, and Greece, and Egypt, and the barbarians beyond.  It must have been a strange philosophy that He taught, for in my day the peoples would have naught of our philosophies.  Revel and lust and drink, blood and cold steel, and the shock of men gathered in the battle—­these were the canons of their creeds.”

I had recovered myself a little by now, and, feeling bitterly ashamed of the weakness into which I had been betrayed, I did my best to expound to her the doctrines of Christianity, to which, however, with the single exception of our conception of Heaven and Hell, I found that she paid but scant attention, her interest being all directed towards the Man who taught them.  Also I told her that among her own people, the Arabs, another prophet, one Mohammed, had arisen and preached a new faith, to which many millions of mankind now adhered.

“Ah!” she said; “I see—­two new religions!  I have known so many, and doubtless there have been many more since I knew aught beyond these caves of Kor.  Mankind asks ever of the skies to vision out what lies behind them.  It is terror for the end, and but a subtler form of selfishness—­this it is that breeds religions.  Mark, my Holly, each religion claims the future for its followers; or, at least, the good thereof.  The evil is for those benighted ones who will have none of it; seeing the light the true believers worship, as the fishes see the stars, but dimly.  The religions come and the religions pass, and the civilisations come and pass, and naught endures but the world and human nature.  Ah! if man would but see that hope is from within and not from without—­that he himself must work out his own salvation!  He is there, and within him is the breath of life and a knowledge of good and evil as good and evil is to him.  Thereon let him build and stand erect, and not cast himself before the image of some unknown God, modelled like his poor self, but with a bigger brain to think the evil thing, and a longer arm to do it.”

I thought to myself, which shows how old such reasoning is, being, indeed, one of the recurring qualities of theological discussion, that her argument sounded very like some that I have heard in the nineteenth century, and in other places than the caves of Kor, and with which, by the way, I totally disagree, but I did not care to try and discuss the question with her.  To begin with, my mind was too weary with all the emotions through which I had passed, and,