n her hand and watching the great orb as she rose,
like some heavenly queen, above the solemn pillars of the temple. "I
brought you--nay, it is strange, but knowest thou, Kallikrates, that
thou liest at this moment upon the very spot where thy dead body lay
when I bore thee back to those caves of Kor so many years ago? It all
returns to my mind now. I can see it, and horrible is it to my sight!"
and she shuddered.

Here Leo jumped up and hastily changed his seat. However the
reminiscence might affect Ayesha, it clearly had few charms for him.

"I brought you," went on Ayesha presently, "that ye might look upon
the most wonderful sight that ever the eye of man beheld--the full moon
shining over ruined Kor. When ye have done your eating--I would that I
could teach you to eat naught but fruit, Kallikrates, but that will come
after thou hast laved in the fire. Once I, too, ate flesh like a brute
beast. When ye have done we will go out, and I will show you this great
temple and the God whom men once worshipped therein."

Of course we got up at once, and started. And here again my pen fails
me. To give a string of measurements and details of the various courts
of the temple would only be wearisome, supposing that I had them, and
yet I know not how I am to describe what we saw, magnificent as it was
even in its ruin, almost beyond the power of realisation. Court upon dim
court, row upon row of mighty pillars--some of them (especially at the
gateways) sculptured from pedestal to capital--space upon space of empty
chambers that spoke more eloquently to the imagination than any crowded
streets. And over all, the dead silence of the dead, the sense of utter
loneliness, and the brooding spirit of the Past! How beautiful it was,
and yet how drear! We did not dare to speak aloud. Ayesha herself was
awed in the presence of an antiquity compared to which even her length
of days was but a little thing; we only whispered, and our whispers
seemed to run from column to column, till they were lost in the quiet
air. Bright fell the moonlight on pillar and court and shattered wall,
hiding all their rents and imperfections in its silver garment, and
clothing their hoar majesty with the peculiar glory of the night. It was
a wonderful sight to see the full moon looking down on the ruined fane
of Kor. It was a wonderful thing to think for how many thousands of
years the dead orb above and the dead city below had gazed thus upon
each other, and