d. However, perhaps fortunately, I had but little time
to reflect, for presently the mutes arrived to carry the sleeping Leo
and our possessions across the central cave, so for a while all was
bustle. Our new rooms were situated immediately behind what we used to
call Ayesha's boudoir--the curtained space where I had first seen her.
Where she herself slept I did not then know, but it was somewhere quite
close.

That night I passed in Leo's room, but he slept through it like the
dead, never once stirring. I also slept fairly well, as, indeed, I
needed to do, but my sleep was full of dreams of all the horrors
and wonders I had undergone. Chiefly, however, I was haunted by that
frightful piece of _diablerie_ by which Ayesha left her finger-marks
upon her rival's hair. There was something so terrible about her swift,
snake-like movement, and the instantaneous blanching of that threefold
line, that, if the results to Ustane had been much more tremendous, I
doubt if they would have impressed me so deeply. To this day I often
dream of that awful scene, and see the weeping woman, bereaved, and
marked like Cain, cast a last look at her lover, and creep from the
presence of her dread Queen.

Another dream that troubled me originated in the huge pyramid of bones.
I dreamed that they all stood up and marched past me in thousands
and tens of thousands--in squadrons, companies, and armies--with the
sunlight shining through their hollow ribs. On they rushed across the
plain to Kor, their imperial home; I saw the drawbridges fall before
them, and heard their bones clank through the brazen gates. On they
went, up the splendid streets, on past fountains, palaces, and temples
such as the eye of man never saw. But there was no man to greet them in
the market-place, and no woman's face appeared at the windows--only
a bodiless voice went before them, calling: "_Fallen is Imperial
Kor!--fallen!--fallen! fallen!_" On, right through the city, marched
those gleaming phalanxes, and the rattle of their bony tread echoed
through the silent air as they pressed grimly on. They passed through
the city and clomb the wall, and marched along the great roadway that
was made upon the wall, till at length they once more reached the
drawbridge. Then, as the sun was sinking, they returned again towards
their sepulchre, and luridly his light shone in the sockets of their
empty eyes, throwing gigantic shadows of their bones, that stretched
away, and crept and