“Tidings indeed,” said Ayesha with a scornful laugh.  “Has her hate made this woman mad that she dares thus to match herself against me?  My Holly, it crossed thy mind but now that it was I who am mad, boasting of what I have no power to perform.  Well, within six days thou shalt learn—­oh! verily thou shalt learn, and, though the issue be so very small, in such a fashion that thou wilt doubt no more for ever.  Stay, I will look, though the effort of it wearies me, for those spies may be but victims to their own fears, or to the falsehoods of Atene.”

Then suddenly, as was common with her when thus Ayesha threw her sight afar, which either from indolence, or because, as she said, it exhausted her, she did but rarely, her lovely face grew rigid like that of a person in a trance; the light faded from her brow, and the great pupils of her eyes contracted themselves and lost their colour.

In a little while, five minutes perhaps, she sighed like one awakening from a deep sleep, passed her hand across her forehead and was as she had been, though somewhat languid, as though strength had left her.

“It is true enough,” she said, “and soon I must be stirring lest many of my people should be killed.  My lord, wouldst thou see war?  Nay, thou shalt bide here in safety whilst I go forward—­to visit Atene as I promised.”

“Where thou goest, I go,” said Leo angrily, his face flushing to the roots of his hair with shame.

“I pray thee not, I pray thee not,” she answered, yet without venturing to forbid him.  “We will talk of it hereafter.  Oros, away!  Send round the Fire of Hes to every chief.  Three nights hence at the moonrise bid the Tribes gather—­nay, not all, twenty thousand of their best will be enough, the rest shall stay to guard the Mountain and this Sanctuary.  Let them bring food with them for fifteen days.  I join them at the following dawn.  Go.”

He bowed and went, whereon, dismissing the matter from her mind, Ayesha began to question me again about the Chinese and their customs.

It was in course of a somewhat similar conversation on the following night, of which, however, I forget the exact details, that a remark of Leo’s led to another exhibition of Ayesha’s marvellous powers.

Leo—­who had been considering her plans for conquest, and again combating them as best he could, for they were entirely repugnant to his religious, social and political views—­said suddenly that after all they must break down, since they would involve the expenditure of sums of money so vast that even Ayesha herself would be unable to provide them by any known methods of taxation.  She looked at him and laughed a little.