u dost find too deep to understand, even now shall it
be given to thee, and to thee also, oh my Holly. Bear each one of you a
lamp, and follow after me whither I shall lead you."

Without stopping to think--indeed, speaking for myself, I had almost
abandoned the function in circumstances under which to think seemed
to be absolutely useless, since thought fell hourly helpless against a
black wall of wonder--we took the lamps and followed her. Going to the
end of her "boudoir," she raised a curtain and revealed a little stair
of the sort that is so common in these dim caves of Kor. As we hurried
down the stair I observed that the steps were worn in the centre to
such an extent that some of them had been reduced from seven and a half
inches, at which I guessed their original height, to about three and
a half. Now, all the other steps that I had seen in the caves were
practically unworn, as was to be expected, seeing that the only traffic
which ever passed upon them was that of those who bore a fresh burden to
the tomb. Therefore this fact struck my notice with that curious force
with which little things do strike us when our minds are absolutely
overwhelmed by a sudden rush of powerful sensations; beaten flat, as it
were, like a sea beneath the first burst of a hurricane, so that every
little object on the surface starts into an unnatural prominence.

At the bottom of the staircase I stood and stared at the worn steps, and
Ayesha, turning, saw me.

"Wonderest thou whose are the feet that have worn away the rock, my
Holly?" she asked. "They are mine--even mine own light feet! I can
remember when those stairs were fresh and level, but for two thousand
years and more have I gone down hither day by day, and see, my sandals
have worn out the solid rock!"

I made no answer, but I do not think that anything that I had heard or
seen brought home to my limited understanding so clear a sense of this
being's overwhelming antiquity as that hard rock hollowed out by her
soft white feet. How many hundreds of thousands of times must she have
passed up and down that stair to bring about such a result?

The stair led to a tunnel, and a few paces down the tunnel was one of
the usual curtain-hung doorways, a glance at which told me that it
was the same where I had been a witness of that terrible scene by the
leaping flame. I recognised the pattern of the curtain, and the sight of
it brought the whole event vividly before my eyes, and mad