e me tremble
even at its memory. Ayesha entered the tomb (for it was a tomb), and we
followed her--I, for one, rejoicing that the mystery of the place was
about to be cleared up, and yet afraid to face its solution.

XXI

THE DEAD AND LIVING MEET

"See now the place where I have slept for these two thousand years,"
said Ayesha, taking the lamp from Leo's hand and holding it above her
head. Its rays fell upon a little hollow in the floor, where I had seen
the leaping flame, but the fire was out now. They fell upon the white
form stretched there beneath its wrappings upon its bed of stone,
upon the fretted carving of the tomb, and upon another shelf of stone
opposite the one on which the body lay, and separated from it by the
breadth of the cave.

"Here," went on Ayesha, laying her hand upon the rock--"here have I
slept night by night for all these generations, with but a cloak to
cover me. It did not become me that I should lie soft when my spouse
yonder," and she pointed to the rigid form, "lay stiff in death. Here
night by night have I slept in his cold company--till, thou seest, this
thick slab, like the stairs down which we passed, has worn thin with the
tossing of my form--so faithful have I been to thee even in thy space
of sleep, Kallikrates. And now, mine own, thou shalt see a wonderful
thing--living, thou shalt behold thyself dead--for well have I tended
thee during all these years, Kallikrates. Art thou prepared?"

We made no answer, but gazed at each other with frightened eyes, the
whole scene was so dreadful and so solemn. Ayesha advanced, and laid her
hand upon the corner of the shroud, and once more spoke.

"Be not affrighted," she said; "though the thing seem wonderful to
thee--all we who live have thus lived before; nor is the very shape
that holds us a stranger to the sun! Only we know it not, because memory
writes no record, and earth hath gathered in the earth she lent us, for
none have saved our glory from the grave. But I, by my arts and by the
arts of those dead men of Kor which I have learned, have held thee
back, oh Kallikrates, from the dust, that the waxen stamp of beauty
on thy face should ever rest before mine eye. 'Twas a mask that memory
might fill, serving to fashion out thy presence from the past, and
give it strength to wander in the habitations of my thought, clad in a
mummery of life that stayed my appetite with visions of dead days.

"Behold now, let the Dead and Living mee