“Thou seest, Kallikrates,” she said.  “Know then that it was I who slew thee:  in the Place of Life I gave thee death.  I slew thee because of the Egyptian Amenartas, whom thou didst love, for by her wiles she held thy heart, and her I could not smite as but now I smote that woman, for she was too strong for me.  In my haste and bitter anger I slew thee, and now for all these days have I lamented thee, and waited for thy coming.  And thou hast come, and none can stand between thee and me, and of a truth now for death I will give thee life—­not life eternal, for that none can give, but life and youth that shall endure for thousands upon thousands of years, and with it pomp, and power, and wealth, and all things that are good and beautiful, such as have been to no man before thee, nor shall be to any man who comes after.  And now one thing more, and thou shalt rest and make ready for the day of thy new birth.  Thou seest this body, which was thine own.  For all these centuries it hath been my cold comfort and my companion, but now I need it no more, for I have thy living presence, and it can but serve to stir up memories of that which I would fain forget.  Let it therefore go back to the dust from which I held it.

“Behold!  I have prepared against this happy hour!” And going to the other shelf or stone ledge, which she said had served her for a bed, she took from it a large vitrified double-handed vase, the mouth of which was tied up with a bladder.  This she loosed, and then, having bent down and gently kissed the white forehead of the dead man, she undid the vase, and sprinkled its contents carefully over the form, taking, I observed, the greatest precautions against any drop of them touching us or herself, and then poured out what remained of the liquid upon the chest and head.  Instantly a dense vapour arose, and the cave was filled with choking fumes that prevented us from seeing anything while the deadly acid (for I presume it was some tremendous preparation of that sort) did its work.  From the spot where the body lay came a fierce fizzing and cracking sound, which ceased, however, before the fumes had cleared away.  At last they were all gone, except a little cloud that still hung over the corpse.  In a couple of minutes more this too had vanished, and, wonderful as it may seem, it is a fact that on the stone bench that had supported the mortal remains of the ancient Kallikrates for so many centuries there was now nothing to be seen but a few handfuls of smoking white powder.  The acid had utterly destroyed the body, and even in places eaten into the stone.  Ayesha stooped down, and, taking a handful of this powder in her grasp, threw it into the air, saying at the same time, in a voice of calm solemnity—­

“Dust to dust!—­the past to the past!—­the dead to the dead!—­Kallikrates is dead, and is born again!”

The ashes floated noiselessly to the rocky floor, and we stood in awed silence and watched them fall, too overcome for words.