hes herself in flesh again. That was a good vision and I will reward
you for it."

"I have earned nothing, O Asika," answered Jeekie modestly, "who only
tell you what I see as I must. Yet, O Asika," he added with a note of
anxiety in his voice, "why do you not read these magic writings for
yourself?"

"Because I dare not, or rather because I can not," she answered
fiercely. "Be silent, slave, for now the power of the good broods upon
my soul."

The dream went on. A great forest appeared, such a forest as they had
passed before they met the cannibals, and set beneath one of the trees,
a tent and in that tent Barbara, Barbara weeping. Someone began to lift
the flap of the tent. She sprang up, snatching at a pistol that lay
beside her, turning its muzzle towards her breast. A man entered the
tent. Alan saw his face, it was his own. Barbara let fall the pistol
and fell backwards as though a bullet from it had pierced her heart. He
leapt towards her, but before he came to where she lay everything had
vanished and he heard Jeekie droning out his lies to the Asika, telling
her that the vision he had seen was one of her and his master seated
with their arms about each other in a chamber of the Golden House.

A third time the dream descended on Alan like a cloud. It seemed to him
that he was borne beyond the flaming borders of the world. Everything
around was new and unfamiliar, vast, changing, lovely, terrible. He
stood alone upon a pearly plain and the sky above him was lit with red
moons, many and many of them that hung there like lamps. Spirits began
to pass him. He could catch something of their splendour as they sped
by with incredible swiftness; he could hear the music of their laughter.
One rose up at his side. It was the Asika, only a thousand times more
splendid; clothed in all the glory of hell. Majestically she bent
towards him, her glowing eyes held his, the deadly perfume of her breath
beat upon his brow and made him drunken.

She spoke to him and her voice sounded like distant bells.

"Through many a life, through many a life," she said, "bought with much
blood, paid for with a million tears, but mine at last, the soul that I
have won to comfort my soul in the eternal day. Come to the place I have
made ready for you, the hell that shall turn to heaven at your step,
come, you by whom I am redeemed, and drive away those gods that torture
me because I was their servant that I might win you."

So she spoke, an