orse, Ayesha, as I am sure it will one day, for something
tells me so, you may enjoy it more than I have done."

CHAPTER XXII

AYESHA'S FAREWELL

Thus I spoke whose nerves were on edge after all that I had seen or, as
even then I suspected, seemed to see. For how could I believe that these
visions of mine had any higher origin than Ayesha's rather malicious
imagination? Already I had formed my theory.

It was that she must be a hypnotist of power, who, after she had put a
spell upon her subject, could project into his mind such fancies as she
chose together with a selection of her own theories. Only two points
remained obscure. The first was--how did she get the necessary
information about the private affairs of a humble individual like
myself, for these were not known even to Zikali with whom she seemed
to be in some kind of correspondence, or to Hans, at any rate in such
completeness?

I could but presume that in some mysterious way she drew them from, or
rather excited them in my own mind and memory, so that I seemed to see
those with whom once I had been intimate, with modifications and in
surroundings that her intelligence had carefully prepared. It would not
be difficult for a mind like hers familiar, as I gathered it was, with
the ancient lore of the Greeks and the Egyptians, to create a kind of
Hades and, by way of difference, to change it from one of shadow to one
of intense illumination, and into it to plunge the consciousness of him
upon whom she had laid her charm of sleep. I had seen nothing and heard
nothing that she might not thus have moulded, always given that she had
access to the needful clay of facts which I alone could furnish.

Granting this hypothesis, the second point was--what might be the object
of her elaborate and most bitter jest? Well, I thought that I could
guess. First, she wished to show her power, or rather to make me
believe that she had power of a very unusual sort. Secondly, she owed
Umslopogaas and myself a debt for our services in the war with Rezu
which we had been told would be repaid in this way. Thirdly, I had
offended her in some fashion and she took her opportunity of settling
the score. Also there was a fourth possibility--that really she
considered herself a moral instructress and desired, as she said, to
teach me a lesson by showing how futile were human hopes and vanities in
respect to the departed and their affections.

Now I do not pretend that all this anal