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 companytill, thou seest, this thick slab, like the stairs down which we passed, has worn thin with the tossing of my formso faithful have I been to thee even in thy space of sleep, Kallikrates.And now, mine own, thou shalt see a wonderful thingliving, thou shalt behold thyself deadfor 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 theeall 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 Ko^r which I have learned, have held thee back, OKallikrates, from the dust, that the waxen stamp of beauty on thy face should ever rest before mine eye.