t, he deposited it by my side, under my nose indeed, so that it
might not be overlooked. Thus it came about that I could not help seeing
some Egyptian hieroglyphics in an oval on the cover, also the title,
and underneath it your own name, my friend, all of which excited
my curiosity, especially the title, which was brief and enigmatic,
consisting indeed of one word, "_She_."

I took up the work and on opening it the first thing my eye fell upon
was a picture of a veiled woman, the sight of which made my heart stand
still, so painfully did it remind me of a certain veiled woman whom once
it had been my fortune to meet. Glancing from it to the printed page one
word seemed to leap at me. It was _Kor_! Now of veiled women there are
plenty in the world, but were there also two Kors?

Then I turned to the beginning and began to read. This happened in
the autumn when the sun does not rise till about six, but it was broad
daylight before I ceased from reading, or rather rushing through that
book.

Oh! what was I to make of it? For here in its pages (to say nothing of
old Billali, who, by the way lied, probably to order, when he told Mr.
Holly that no white man had visited his country for many generations,
and those gloomy, man-eating Amahagger scoundrels) once again I
found myself face to face with _She-who-commands_, now rendered as
_She-who-must-be-obeyed_, which means much the same thing--in her case
at least; yes, with Ayesha the lovely, the mystic, the changeful and the
imperious.

Moreover the history filled up many gaps in my own limited experiences
of that enigmatical being who was half divine (though, I think, rather
wicked or at any rate unmoral in her way) and yet all woman. It is true
that it showed her in lights very different from and higher than those
in which she had presented herself to me. Yet the substratum of her
character was the same, or rather of her characters, for of these she
seemed to have several in a single body, being, as she said of herself
to me, "not One but Many and not Here but Everywhere."

Further, I found the story of Kallikrates, which I had set down as a
mere falsehood invented for my bewilderment, expanded and explained. Or
rather not explained, since, perhaps that she might deceive, to me
she had spoken of this murdered Kallikrates without enthusiasm, as a
handsome person to whom, because of an indiscretion of her youth, she
was bound by destiny and whose return--somewhat to her so