hat I herd here with
barbarians lower than the beasts?"

[*] Pronounced Assha.--L. H. H.

"I know not," I said humbly.

"Because I wait for him I love. My life has perchance been evil, I know
not--for who can say what is evil and what good?--so I fear to die even
if I could die, which I cannot until mine hour comes, to go and seek him
where he is; for between us there might rise a wall I could not climb,
at least, I dread it. Surely easy would it be also to lose the way in
seeking in those great spaces wherein the planets wander on for ever.
But the day will come, it may be when five thousand more years have
passed, and are lost and melted into the vault of Time, even as the
little clouds melt into the gloom of night, or it may be to-morrow,
when he, my love, shall be born again, and then, following a law that
is stronger than any human plan, he shall find me _here_, where once
he knew me, and of a surety his heart will soften towards me, though I
sinned against him; ay, even though he knew me not again, yet will he
love me, if only for my beauty's sake."

For a moment I was dumbfounded, and could not answer. The matter was too
overpowering for my intellect to grasp.

"But even so, oh Queen," I said at last, "even if we men be born again
and again, that is not so with thee, if thou speakest truly." Here she
looked up sharply, and once more I caught the flash of those hidden
eyes; "thou," I went on hurriedly, "who hast never died?"

"That is so," she said; "and it is so because I have, half by chance and
half by learning, solved one of the great secrets of the world. Tell
me, stranger: life is--why therefore should not life be lengthened for a
while? What are ten or twenty or fifty thousand years in the history of
life? Why in ten thousand years scarce will the rain and storms lessen
a mountain top by a span in thickness? In two thousand years these caves
have not changed, nothing has changed but the beasts, and man, who is as
the beasts. There is naught that is wonderful about the matter, couldst
thou but understand. Life is wonderful, ay, but that it should be a
little lengthened is not wonderful. Nature hath her animating spirit as
well as man, who is Nature's child, and he who can find that spirit,
and let it breathe upon him, shall live with her life. He shall not live
eternally, for Nature is not eternal, and she herself must die, even as
the nature of the moon hath died. She herself must die, I say, or rathe