er two
hundred and fifty thousand years before, much as any modern lady might
do of a house that had been destroyed a month ago by an earthquake or a
Zeppelin bomb, while she described the details of a disaster which now
frightened her no more. I think it was then that for the first time I
really began to believe that in fact Yva had lived all those aeons since
and been as she still appeared.

We passed from the palace to the ruins of the temple, through what,
as she said, had been a pleasure-garden, pointing out where a certain
avenue of rare palms had grown, down which once it was her habit to walk
in the cool of the day. Or, rather, there were two terraced temples,
one dedicated to Fate like that in the underground city of Nyo, and the
other to Love. Of the temple to Fate she told me her father had been the
High Priest, and of the temple to Love she was the High Priestess.

Then it was that I understood why she had brought me here.

She led the way to a marble block covered with worn-out carvings and
almost buried in the debris. This, she said, was the altar of offerings.
I asked her what offerings, and she replied with a smile:

"Only wine, to signify the spirit of life, and flowers to symbolise
its fragrance," and she laid her finger on a cup-like depression, still
apparent in the marble, into which the wine was poured.

Indeed, I gathered that there was nothing coarse or bacchanalian about
this worship of a prototype of Aphrodite; on the contrary, that it was
more or less spiritual and ethereal. We sat down on the altar stone. I
wondered a little that she should have done so, but she read my thought,
and answered:

"Sometimes we change our faiths, Humphrey, or perhaps they grow. Also,
have I not told you that sacrifices were offered on this altar?" and she
sighed and smiled.

I do not know which was the sweeter, the smile or the sigh.

We looked at the water glimmering in the crater beneath us on the edge
of which we sat. We looked at heaven above in which the great moon
sailed royally. Then we looked into each other's eyes.

"I love you," I said.

"I know it," she answered gently. "You have loved me from the first,
have you not? Even when I lay asleep in the coffin you began to love me,
but until you dreamed a certain dream you would not admit it."

"Yva, what was the meaning of that dream?"

"I cannot say, Humphrey. But I tell you this. As you will learn in time,
one spirit may be clothed in differ