nows not how to win
the love of women. Let him say moreover what reward he desires since if
I can give it to him, it shall be his."

Again I translated. Umslopogaas received her prophecies in stoical
silence, and as I thought with indifference, and only said in reply,

"The glory that I have won is my reward and the only boon I seek at this
queen's hands is that if she can she should give me sight of a woman for
whom my heart is hungry, and with it knowledge that this woman lives in
that land whither I travel like all men."

When she heard these words Ayesha said,

"True, I had forgotten. Your heart also is hungry, I think, Allan, for
the vision of sundry faces that you see no more. Well, I will do my
best, but since only faith fulfils itself, how can I who must strive to
pierce the gates of darkness for one so unbelieving, know that they will
open at my word? Come to me, both of you, at the sunset to-morrow."

Then as though to change the subject, she talked to me for a long while
about Kor, of which she told me a most interesting history, true or
false, that I omit here.

At length, as though suddenly she had grown tired, waving her hand to
show that the conversation was ended, Ayesha went to the wounded men and
touched them each in turn.

"Now they will recover swiftly," she said, and leaving the place was
gone into the darkness.

CHAPTER XX

THE GATE OF DEATH

Before turning in I examined these wounded men for myself. The truth is
that I was anxious to learn their exact condition in order that I might
make an estimate as to when it would be possible for us to leave this
valley or crater bottom of Kor, of which I was heartily tired. Who could
desire to stay in a place where he had not only been involved in a deal
of hard, doubtful, and very dangerous fighting from which all personal
interest was absent, but where also he was meshed in a perfect spider's
web of bewilderment, and exposed to continual insult into the bargain?

For that is what it came to; this Ayesha took every opportunity to jeer
at and affront me. And why? Just because I had conceived doubts, which
somehow she discovered, of the amazing tales with which it had amused
her to stuff me, as a farmer's wife does a turkey poult with meal
pellets. How could she expect me, a man, after all, of some experience,
to believe such lies, which, not half an hour before, in the coolest
possible fashion she had herself admitted to be lies and nothing