“Oh, great Heaven!” gasped Leo, “art thou a woman?”

“A woman in truth—­in very truth—­and thine own spouse, Kallikrates!” she answered, stretching out her rounded ivory arms towards him, and smiling, ah, so sweetly!

He looked and looked, and slowly I perceived that he was drawing nearer to her.  Suddenly his eye fell upon the corpse of poor Ustane, and he shuddered and stopped.

“How can I?” he said hoarsely.  “Thou art a murderess; she loved me.”

Observe, he was already forgetting that he had loved her.

“It is naught,” she murmured, and her voice sounded sweet as the night-wind passing through the trees.  “It is naught at all.  If I have sinned, let my beauty answer for my sin.  If I have sinned, it is for love of thee:  let my sin, therefore, be put away and forgotten;” and once more she stretched out her arms and whispered “Come,” and then in another few seconds it was all over.

I saw him struggle—­I saw him even turn to fly; but her eyes drew him more strongly than iron bonds, and the magic of her beauty and concentrated will and passion entered into him and overpowered him—­ay, even there, in the presence of the body of the woman who had loved him well enough to die for him.  It sounds horrible and wicked enough, but he should not be too greatly blamed, and be sure his sin will find him out.  The temptress who drew him into evil was more than human, and her beauty was greater than the loveliness of the daughters of men.

I looked up again and now her perfect form lay in his arms, and her lips were pressed against his own; and thus, with the corpse of his dead love for an altar, did Leo Vincey plight his troth to her red-handed murderess—­plight it for ever and a day.  For those who sell themselves into a like dominion, paying down the price of their own honour, and throwing their soul into the balance to sink the scale to the level of their lusts, can hope for no deliverance here or hereafter.  As they have sown, so shall they reap and reap, even when the poppy flowers of passion have withered in their hands, and their harvest is but bitter tares, garnered in satiety.

Suddenly, with a snake-like motion, she seemed to slip from his embrace, and then again broke out into her low laugh of triumphant mockery.

“Did I not tell thee that within a little space thou wouldst creep to my knee, oh Kallikrates?  And surely the space has not been a great one!”

Leo groaned in shame and misery; for though he was overcome and stricken down, he was not so lost as to be unaware of the depth of the degradation to which he had sunk.  On the contrary, his better nature rose up in arms against his fallen self, as I saw clearly enough later on.

Ayesha laughed again, and then quickly veiled herself, and made a sign to the girl mute, who had been watching the whole scene with curious startled eyes.  The girl left, and presently returned, followed by two male mutes, to whom the Queen made another sign.  Thereon they all three seized the body of poor Ustane by the arms, and dragged it heavily down the cavern and away through the curtains at the end.  Leo watched it for a little while, and then covered his eyes with his hand, and it too, to my excited fancy, seemed to watch us as it went.