are the pictures of the future that mankind can thus draw with this brush of faith and this many-coloured pigment of imagination!  Strange, too, that no one of them doth agree with another!  I could tell thee—­but there, what is the use? why rob a fool of his bauble?  Let it pass, and I pray, oh Holly, that when thou dost feel old age creeping slowly toward thyself, and the confusion of senility making havoc in thy brain, thou mayest not bitterly regret that thou didst cast away the imperial boon I would have given to thee.  But so it hath ever been; man can never be content with that which his hand can pluck.  If a lamp be in his reach to light him through the darkness, he must needs cast it down because it is no star.  Happiness danceth ever apace before him, like the marsh-fires in the swamps, and he must catch the fire, and he must hold the star!  Beauty is naught to him, because there are lips more honey-sweet; and wealth is naught, because others can weigh him down with heavier shekels; and fame is naught, because there have been greater men than he.  Thyself thou saidst it, and I turn thy words against thee.  Well, thou dreamest that thou shalt pluck the star.  I believe it not, and I think thee a fool, my Holly, to throw away the lamp.”

I made no answer, for I could not—­especially before Leo—­tell her that since I had seen her face I knew that it would always be before my eyes, and that I had no wish to prolong an existence which must always be haunted and tortured by her memory, and by the last bitterness of unsatisfied love.  But so it was, and so, alas, is it to this hour!

“And now,” went on She, changing her tone and the subject together, “tell me, my Kallikrates, for as yet I know it not, how came ye to seek me here?  Yesternight thou didst say that Kallikrates—­him whom thou sawest—­was thine ancestor.  How was it?  Tell me—­thou dost not speak overmuch!”

Thus adjured, Leo told her the wonderful story of the casket and of the potsherd that, written on by his ancestress, the Egyptian Amenartas, had been the means of guiding us to her.  Ayesha listened intently, and, when he had finished, spoke to me.

“Did I not tell thee one day, when we did talk of good and evil, oh Holly—­it was when my beloved lay so ill—­that out of good came evil, and out of evil good—­that they who sowed knew not what the crop should be, nor he who struck where the blow should fall?  See, now:  this Egyptian Amenartas, this royal child of the Nile who hated me, and whom even now I hate, for in a way she did prevail against me—­see, now, she herself hath been the very means to bring her lover to mine arms!  For her sake I slew him, and now, behold, through her he hath comeback to me!  She would have done me evil, and sowed her seeds that I might reap tares, and behold she hath given me more than all the world can give, and there is a strange square for thee to fit into thy circle of good and evil, oh Holly!