s powers as a chemist.

"That thou shalt learn, or shalt not learn if it pleases thee to stay
behind. Come, Leo, my love, my love, and leave this wise philosopher
first to find his riddle and next to guess it."

Then turning her back to me she smiled on him so sweetly that although
really he was more loth to go than I, Leo would have followed her
through a furnace door, as indeed, had he but known it, he was about to
do.

So they started, and I accompanied them since with Ayesha it was
useless to indulge in any foolish pride, or to make oneself a victim to
consistency. Also I was anxious to see her new marvel, and did not care
to rely for an account of it upon Leo's descriptive skill, which at its
best was never more than moderate.

She took us down passages that we had not passed before, to a door which
she signed to Leo to open. He obeyed, and from the cave within issued a
flood of light. As we guessed at once, the place was her laboratory,
for about it stood metal flasks and various strange-shaped instruments.
Moreover, there was a furnace in it, one of the best conceivable, for it
needed neither fuel nor stoking, whose gaseous fires, like those of the
twisted columns in the Sanctuary, sprang from the womb of the volcano
beneath our feet.

When we entered two priests were at work there: one of them stirring a
cauldron with an iron rod and the other receiving its molten contents
into a mould of clay. They stopped to salute Ayesha, but she bade them
to continue their task, asking them if all went well.

"Very well, O Hes," they answered; and we passed through that cave and
sundry doors and passages to a little chamber cut in the rock. There
was no lamp or flame of fire in it, and yet the place was filled with a
gentle light which seemed to flow from the opposing wall.

"What were those priests doing?" I said, more to break the silence than
for any other reason.

"Why waste breath upon foolish questions?" she replied. "Are no metals
smelted in thy country, O Holly? Now hadst thou sought to know what I am
doing--But that, without seeing, thou wouldst not believe, so, Doubter,
thou shalt see."

Then she pointed to and bade us don, two strange garments that hung upon
the wall, made of a material which seemed to be half cloth and half wood
and having headpieces not unlike a diver's helmet.

So under her directions Leo helped me into mine, lacing it up behind,
after which, or so I gathered from the sounds--for no