, burst out into a torrent of grief. Now that he was no
longer in the presence of the dread _She_, his sense of the awfulness
of all that had happened, and more especially of the wicked murder of
Ustane, who was bound to him by ties so close, broke upon him like a
storm, and lashed him into an agony of remorse and terror which was
painful to witness. He cursed himself--he cursed the hour when we had
first seen the writing on the sherd, which was being so mysteriously
verified, and bitterly he cursed his own weakness. Ayesha he dared not
curse--who dared speak evil of such a woman, whose consciousness, for
aught we knew, was watching us at the very moment?

"What am I to do, old fellow?" he groaned, resting his head against my
shoulder in the extremity of his grief. "I let her be killed--not that
I could help that, but within five minutes I was kissing her murderess
over her body. I am a degraded brute, but I cannot resist that" (and
here his voice sank)--"that awful sorceress. I know I shall do it again
to-morrow; I know that I am in her power for always; if I never saw her
again I should never think of anybody else during all my life; I must
follow her as a needle follows a magnet; I would not go away now if I
could; I could not leave her, my legs would not carry me, but my mind is
still clear enough, and in my mind I hate her--at least, I think so. It
is all so horrible; and that--that body! What can I make of it? It was
_I_! I am sold into bondage, old fellow, and she will take my soul as
the price of herself!"

Then, for the first time, I told him that I was in a but very little
better position; and I am bound to say that, notwithstanding his own
infatuation, he had the decency to sympathise with me. Perhaps he did
not think it worth while being jealous, realising that he had no cause
so far as the lady was concerned. I went on to suggest that we should
try to run away, but we soon rejected the project as futile, and, to be
perfectly honest, I do not believe that either of us would really have
left Ayesha even if some superior power had suddenly offered to convey
us from these gloomy caves and set us down in Cambridge. We could no
more have left her than a moth can leave the light that destroys it. We
were like confirmed opium-eaters: in our moments of reason we well knew
the deadly nature of our pursuit, but we certainly were not prepared to
abandon its terrible delights.

No man who once had seen _She_ unveiled,