e to the level of
their lusts, can hope for no deliverance here or hereafter. As they
have sown, so shall they reap and reap, even when the poppy flowers of
passion have withered in their hands, and their harvest is but bitter
tares, garnered in satiety.

Suddenly, with a snake-like motion, she seemed to slip from his embrace,
and then again broke out into her low laugh of triumphant mockery.

"Did I not tell thee that within a little space thou wouldst creep to my
knee, oh Kallikrates? And surely the space has not been a great one!"

Leo groaned in shame and misery; for though he was overcome and
stricken down, he was not so lost as to be unaware of the depth of the
degradation to which he had sunk. On the contrary, his better nature
rose up in arms against his fallen self, as I saw clearly enough later
on.

Ayesha laughed again, and then quickly veiled herself, and made a sign
to the girl mute, who had been watching the whole scene with curious
startled eyes. The girl left, and presently returned, followed by two
male mutes, to whom the Queen made another sign. Thereon they all three
seized the body of poor Ustane by the arms, and dragged it heavily down
the cavern and away through the curtains at the end. Leo watched it for
a little while, and then covered his eyes with his hand, and it too, to
my excited fancy, seemed to watch us as it went.

"There passes the dead past," said Ayesha, solemnly, as the curtains
shook and fell back into their places, when the ghastly procession
had vanished behind them. And then, with one of those extraordinary
transitions of which I have already spoken, she again threw off her
veil, and broke out, after the ancient and poetic fashion of the
dwellers in Arabia,[*] into a paean of triumph or epithalamium, which,
wild and beautiful as it was, is exceedingly difficult to render into
English, and ought by rights to be sung to the music of a cantata,
rather than written and read. It was divided into two parts--one
descriptive or definitive, and the other personal; and, as nearly as I
can remember, ran as follows:--

Love is like a flower in the desert.

It is like the aloe of Arabia that blooms but once and dies; it blooms
in the salt emptiness of Life, and the brightness of its beauty is set
upon the waste as a star is set upon a storm.

It hath the sun above that is the Spirit, and above it blows the air of
its divinity.

At the echoing of a step, Love blooms, I say; I say Lov