e
ten thousand years of life--and thou shalt have it in payment if thou
wilt--think: at last my deliverer came--he for whom I had watched and
waited through the generations--at the appointed time he came to seek
me, as I knew that he must come, for my wisdom could not err, though
I knew not when or how. Yet see how ignorant I was! See how small my
knowledge, and how faint my strength! For hours he lay there sick unto
death, and I felt it not--I who had waited for him for two thousand
years--I knew it not. And then at last I see him, and behold, my chance
is gone but by a hair's breadth even before I have it, for he is in the
very jaws of death, whence no power of mine can draw him. And if he die,
surely must the Hell be lived through once more--once more must I face
the weary centuries, and wait, and wait till the time in its fulness
shall bring my Beloved back to me. And then thou gavest him the
medicine, and that five minutes dragged long before I knew if he would
live or die, and I tell thee that all the sixty generations that are
gone were not so long as that five minutes. But they passed at length,
and still he showed no sign, and I knew that if the drug works not then,
so far as I have had knowledge, it works not at all. Then thought I that
he was once more dead, and all the tortures of all the years gathered
themselves into a single venomed spear, and pierced me through and
through, because again I had lost Kallikrates! And then, when all was
done, behold! he sighed, behold! he lived, and I knew that he would
live, for none die on whom the drug takes hold. Think of it now, my
Holly--think of the wonder of it! He will sleep for twelve hours and
then the fever will have left him!"

She stopped, and laid her hand upon his golden head, and then bent down
and kissed his brow with a chastened abandonment of tenderness that
would have been beautiful to behold had not the sight cut me to the
heart--for I was jealous!

XVIII

"GO, WOMAN!"

Then followed a silence of a minute or so, during which _She_ appeared,
if one might judge from the almost angelic rapture of her face--for she
looked angelic sometimes--to be plunged into a happy ecstasy. Suddenly,
however, a new thought struck her, and her expression became the very
reverse of angelic.

"Almost had I forgotten," she said, "that woman, Ustane. What is she
to Kallikrates--his servant, or----" and she paused, and her voice
trembled.

I shrugged my shoulders.