"Hast thou aught to ask me before thou goest, OHolly?" she said, after a few moments' reflection."It is but a rude life that thou must live here, for these people are savages, and know not the ways of cultivated man.Not that I am troubled thereby, for, behold my food," and she pointed to the fruit upon the little table."Naught but fruit doth ever pass my lipsfruit and cakes of flour, and a little water.Ihave bidden my girls to wait upon thee.They are mutes, thou knowest, deaf are they and dumb, and therefore the safest of servants; save to those who can read their faces and their signs.I bred them soit hath taken many centuries and much trouble; but last I have triumphed.Once I succeeded before, but the race was too ugly, so I let it die away; but now, as thou seest, they are otherwise.Once, too, I reared a race of giants, but after a while Nature would no more of it, and it died away.Hast thou aught to ask of me?""Ay, one thing, O Ayesha," I said, boldly; but feeling by no means as bold as I trust I looked."I would gaze upon thy face."She laughed out in her bell-like notes."Bethink thee, Holly," she answered; "bethink thee.It seems that thou knowest the old myths of the gods of Greece.Was there not one Actaeon who perished miserably because he looked on too much beauty? If I show thee my face, perchance thou wouldst perish miserably also;perchance thou wouldst eat out thy heart in impotent desire; for know I am not for theeI am for no man, save one, who hath been, but is not yet.""As thou wilt, Ayesha," I said."I fear not thy beauty.I have put my heart away from such vanity as woman's loveliness, that passes like a flower.""Nay, thou errest," she said; "that does not pass.My beauty endures even as I endure; still if thou wilt, Orash man, have thy will; but blame not me if passion mount thy reason, as the Egyptian breakers used to mount a colt, and guide it whither thou wilt not.
Never may the man to whom my beauty hath been unveiled put it from his mind, and therefore even with these savages do I go veiled, lest they vex me, and I should slay them.Say, wilt thou see?""I will," I answered, my curiosity overpowering me.
She lifted her white and rounded armsnever had Iseen such arms before-and slowly, very slowly, withdrew some fastening beneath her hair.Then all of a sudden the long, corpse-like wrappings fell from her to the ground, and my eyes travelled up her form, now only robed in a garb of clinging white that did but serve to show its perfect and imperial shape, instinct with a life that was more than life, and with a certain serpent-like grace that was more than human.