ing the more impressive and
intimate "thou," much as is the manner of the French.

"Thou hast made thy journey, Allan," she said, "and what thou hast
seen there thou shalt tell me presently. Yet from thy mien I gather
this--that thou art glad to look upon flesh and blood again and, after
the company of spirits, to find that of mortal woman. Come then and sit
beside me and tell thy tale."

"Where are the others?" I asked as I rose slowly to obey, for my head
swam and my feet seemed feeble.

"Gone, Allan, who as I think have had enough of ghosts, which is perhaps
thy case also. Come, drink this and be a man once more. Drink it to me
whose skill and power have brought thee safe from lands that human feet
were never meant to tread," and taking a strange-shaped cup from a stool
that stood beside her, she offered it to me.

I drank to the last drop, neither knowing nor caring whether it were
wine or poison, since my heart seemed desperate at its failure and my
spirit crushed beneath the weight of its great betrayal. I suppose it
was the former, for the contents of that cup ran through my veins like
fire and gave me back my courage and the joy of life.

I stepped to the dais and sat me down upon the couch, leaning against
its rounded end so that I was almost face to face with Ayesha who had
turned towards me, and thence could study her unveiled loveliness. For a
while she said nothing, only eyed me up and down and smiled and smiled,
as though she were waiting for that wine to do its work with me.

"Now that thou art a man again, Allan, tell me what thou didst see when
thou wast more--or less--than man."

So I told her all, for some power within her seemed to draw the truth
out of me. Nor did the tale appear to cause her much surprise.

"There is truth in thy dream," she said when I had finished; "a lesson
also."

"Then it was all a dream?" I interrupted.

"Is not everything a dream, even life itself, Allan? If so, what can
this be that thou hast seen, but a dream within a dream, and itself
containing other dreams, as in the old days the ball fashioned by the
eastern workers of ivory would oft be found to contain another ball, and
this yet another and another and another, till at the inmost might be
found a bead of gold, or perchance a jewel, which was the prize of him
who could draw out ball from ball and leave them all unbroken. That
search was difficult and rarely was the jewel come by, if at all, so
that some sa