air woman lying where thou liest now, yes, on that
very bench. She was so beautiful that I was wont to creep in hither with
a lamp and gaze upon her. Had it not been for her cold hands, almost
could I think that she slept and would one day awake, so fair and
peaceful was she in her robes of white. White was she, too, and her
hair was yellow and lay down her almost to the feet. There are many such
still in the tombs at the place where _She_ is, for those who set them
there had a way I know naught of, whereby to keep their beloved out of
the crumbling hand of Decay, even when Death had slain them. Ay, day
by day I came hither, and gazed on her till at last--laugh not at me,
stranger, for I was but a silly lad--I learned to love that dead form,
that shell which once had held a life that no more is. I would creep
up to her and kiss her cold face, and wonder how many men had lived and
died since she was, and who had loved her and embraced her in the days
that long had passed away. And, my Baboon, I think I learned wisdom from
that dead one, for of a truth it taught me of the littleness of life,
and the length of Death, and how all things that are under the sun go
down one path, and are for ever forgotten. And so I mused, and it seemed
to me that wisdom flowed into me from the dead, till one day my mother,
a watchful woman, but hasty-minded, seeing I was changed, followed me,
and saw the beautiful white one, and feared that I was bewitched, as,
indeed, I was. So half in dread, and half in anger, she took up the
lamp, and standing the dead woman up against the wall even there, set
fire to her hair, and she burnt fiercely, even down to the feet, for
those who are thus kept burn excellently well.

"See, my son, there on the roof is yet the smoke of her burning."

I looked up doubtfully, and there, sure enough, on the roof of the
sepulchre, was a peculiarly unctuous and sooty mark, three feet or more
across. Doubtless it had in the course of years been rubbed off the
sides of the little cave, but on the roof it remained, and there was no
mistaking its appearance.

"She burnt," he went on in a meditative way, "even to the feet, but the
feet I came back and saved, cutting the burnt bone from them, and
hid them under the stone bench there, wrapped up in a piece of linen.
Surely, I remember it as though it were but yesterday. Perchance they
are there, if none have found them, even to this hour. Of a truth I have
not entered this ch