ll, brooding over what
I had heard. Leo groped his way to me and, seizing my arm, shook it.

"Are you asleep?" he asked angrily. "Speak, man, speak!"

"No," I answered, "never was I more awake. Give me time."

Then I rose, and going to the open window, drew up the blind and stood
there staring at the sky, which grew pearl-hued with the first faint
tinge of dawn. Leo came also and leant upon the window-sill, and I could
feel that his body was trembling as though with cold. Clearly he was
much moved.

"You talk of a sign," I said to him, "but in your sign I see nothing but
a wild dream."

"It was no dream," he broke in fiercely; "it was a vision."

"A vision then if you will, but there are visions true and false, and
how can we know that this is true? Listen, Leo. What is there in all
that wonderful tale which could not have been fashioned in your own
brain, distraught as it is almost to madness with your sorrow and your
longings? You dreamed that you were alone in the vast universe. Well, is
not every living creature thus alone? You dreamed that the shadowy shape
of Ayesha came to you. Has it ever left your side? You dreamed that she
led you over sea and land, past places haunted by your memory, above the
mysterious mountains of the Unknown to an undiscovered peak. Does she
not thus lead you through life to that peak which lies beyond the Gates
of Death? You dreamed----"

"Oh! no more of it," he exclaimed. "What I saw, I saw, and that I shall
follow. Think as you will, Horace, and do what you will. To-morrow I
start for India, with you if you choose to come; if not, without you."

"You speak roughly, Leo," I said. "You forget that _I_ have had no sign,
and that the nightmare of a man so near to insanity that but a few hours
ago he was determined upon suicide, will be a poor staff to lean on when
we are perishing in the snows of Central Asia. A mixed vision, this of
yours, Leo, with its mountain peak shaped like a _crux-ansata_ and the
rest. Do you suggest that Ayesha is re-incarnated in Central Asia--as a
female Grand Lama or something of that sort?"

"I never thought of it, but why not?" asked Leo quietly. "Do you
remember a certain scene in the Caves of Kor yonder, when the living
looked upon the dead, and dead and living were the same? And do you
remember what Ayesha swore, that she would come again--yes, to this
world; and how could that be except by re-birth, or, what is the same
thing, by the transmigrati