all know of what stuff dreams are made. At least this thought
comes to me," I added hurriedly, fearing lest I had said too much, "and
one so wise as you are, I repeat, knows well that a woman who says she
has lived two thousand years must be mad or--suffer from delusions,
because I repeat, it is impossible."

At these quite innocent remarks she sprang to her feet in a rage that
might truly be called royal in every sense.

"Impossible! Romance! Dreams! Delusions! Mad!" she cried in a ringing
voice. "Oh! of a truth you weary me, and I have a mind to send you
whither you will learn what is impossible and what is not. Indeed, I
would do it, and now, only I need your services, and if I did there
would be none left for me to talk with, since your companion is
moonstruck and the others are but savages of whom I have seen enough.

"Hearken, fool! _Nothing_ is impossible. Why do you seek, you who talk
of the impossible, to girdle the great world in the span of your two
hands and to weigh the secrets of the Universe in the balance of your
petty mind and, of that which you cannot understand, to say that it is
not? Life you admit because you see it all about you. But that it should
endure for two thousand years, which after all is but a second's beat in
the story of the earth, that to you is 'impossible,' although in truth
the buried seed or the sealed-up toad can live as long. Doubtless, also,
you have some faith which promises you this same boon to all eternity,
after the little change called Death.

"Nay, Allan, it is possible enough, like to many other things of which
you do not dream to-day that will be common to the eyes of those who
follow after you. Mayhap you think it impossible that I should speak
with and learn of you from yonder old black wizard who dwells in the
country whence you came. And yet whenever I will I do so in the night
because he is in tune with me, and what I do shall be done by all men in
the years unborn. Yes, they shall talk together across the wide spaces
of the earth, and the lover shall hear her lover's voice although great
seas roll between them. Nor perchance will it stop at this; perchance in
future time men shall hold converse with the denizens of the stars, and
even with the dead who have passed into silence and the darkness. Do you
hear and understand me?"

"Yes, yes," I answered feebly.

"You lie, as you are too prone to do. You hear but you do not understand
nor believe, and oh! you ve