if as thou sayest, this as yet thou canst not do,
then let us be wed and take what fortune gives us. All men must die;
but at least before I die I shall have been happy with thee for a
while--yes, if only for a single hour."

"Would that I dared," Ayesha answered with a little piteous motion of
her hand. "Oh! urge me no more, Leo, lest that at last I should take the
risk and lead thee down a dreadful road. Leo, hast thou never heard of
the love which slays, or of the poison that may lurk in a cup of joy too
perfect?"

Then, as though she feared herself, Ayesha turned from him and fled.

Thus this matter ended. In itself it was not a great one, for Leo's
hurts were mere scratches, and the hunters, instead of being killed,
were promoted to be members of his body-guard. Yet it told us many
things. For instance, that whenever she chose to do so, Ayesha had
the power of perceiving all Leo's movements from afar, and even of
communicating her strength of mental vision to others, although to help
him in any predicament she appeared to have no power, which, of course,
accounted for the hideous and ever-present might of her anxiety.

Think what it would be to any one of us were we mysteriously acquainted
with every open danger, every risk of sickness, every secret peril
through which our best-beloved must pass. To see the rock trembling to
its fall and they loitering beneath it; to see them drink of water and
know it full of foulest poison; to see them embark upon a ship and be
aware that it was doomed to sink, but not to be able to warn them or to
prevent them. Surely no mortal brain could endure such constant terrors,
since hour by hour the arrows of death flit unseen and unheard past the
breasts of each of us, till at length one finds its home there.

What then must Ayesha have suffered, watching with her spirit's eyes all
the hair-breadth escapes of our journeyings? When, for instance, in the
beginning she saw Leo at my house in Cumberland about to kill himself
in his madness and despair, and by some mighty effort of her superhuman
will, wrung from whatever Power it was that held her in its fearful
thraldom, the strength to hurl her soul across the world and thereby in
his sleep reveal to him the secret of the hiding-place where he would
find her.

Or to take one more example out of many--when she saw him hanging by
that slender thread of yak's hide from the face of the waterfall of ice
and herself remained unable to s