Nature! And still, in the herbage, hummed the
small insects, and still, from the cavern, laughed
the great kingfisher. I said to Ayesha, "Farewell,
your love mourns the dead, mine calls me
to the living. You are now with your own
people, they may console you—say if I can
assist."

"There is no consolation for me! What
mourner can be consoled if the dead die for
ever? Nothing for him is left but a grave; that
grave shall be in the land where the song of
Ayesha first lulled him to sleep! Thou assist
ME—thou—the wise man of Europe! From me
ask assistance. What road wilt thou take to
thy home?"

"There is but one road known to me through
the maze of the solitude; that which we took to
this upland."

"On that road Death lurks, and awaits thee!
Blind dupe, couldst thou think that if the grand
secret of life had been won, he whose head rests
on my lap would have yielded thee one petty
drop of the essence which had filched from his
store of life but a moment? Me, who so loved
and so cherished him—me, he would have doomed
to the pitiless cord of my servant, the Strangler,
if my death could have lengthened a hairbreadth
the span of his being. But what matters to me
his crime or his madness? I loved him—I loved
him!"

She bowed her veiled head lower and lower;
perhaps, under the veil, her lips kissed the lips of
the dead. Then she said, whisperingly:

"Juma, the Strangler, whose word never failed
to his master, whose prey never slipped from his
snare, waits thy step on the road to thy home!
But thy death cannot now profit the dead, the
beloved. And thou hast had pity for him who
took but thine aid to design thy destruction.
His life is lost, thine is saved!"

She spoke no more in the tongue that I could
interpret. She spoke, in the language unknown,
a few murmured words to her swarthy attendants;
then the armed men, still weeping, rose, and made
a dumb sign to me to go with them. I understood
by the sign that Ayesha had told them to
guard me on my way; but she gave no reply to
my parting thanks.

CHAPTER LXXXIX.

I DESCENDED into the valley; the armed men
followed. The path, on that side of the
watercourse not reached by the flames, wound through
meadows still green, or amidst groves still
unscathed. As a turning in the way brought in
front of my sight the place I had left behind, I
beheld the black litter creeping down the
descent, with its curtains closed, and the Veiled
Woman walking by its side. But soon the
funeral procession was lost to my eyes, and the
thoughts that it roused were erased. The waves
in man's brain are like those of the sea, rushing
on, rushing over the wrecks of the vessels that
rode on their surface, to sink, after storm, in
their deeps. One thought cast forth into the
future now mastered all in the past. "Was
Lilian living still?" Absorbed in the gloom of
that thought, hurried on by the goad that my
heart, in its tortured impatience, gave to my
footstep, I outstripped the slow stride of the
armed men, and, midway between the place I had
left and the home which I sped to, came, far
in advance of my guards, into the thicket in
which the bushmen had started up in my path
on the night that Lilian had watched for my
coming. The earth at my feet was rife with
creeping plants and many-coloured flowers, the
sky overhead was half-hid by motionless pines.
Suddenly, whether crawling out from the herbage
or dropping down from the trees, by my side
stood the white-robed and skeleton form—
Ayesha's attendant, the Strangler.

I sprang from him in shuddering, then halted
and faced him. The hideous creature crept
towards me, cringing and fawning, making signs of
humble good will and servile obeisance. Again
I recoiled—wrathfully, loathingly; turned my face
homeward, and fled on. I thought I had baffled
his chase, when, just at the mouth of the thicket,
he dropped from a bough in my path close behind
me. Before I could turn, some dark muffling
substance fell between my sight and the sun, and I
felt a fierce strain at my throat. But the words
of Ayesha had warned me; with one rapid hand
I seized the noose before it could tighten too
closely, with the other I tore the bandage away
from my eyes, and, wheeling round on the
dastardly foe, struck him down with one spurn of
my foot. His hand, as he fell, relaxed its hold
on the noose; I freed my throat from the knot,
and sprang from the copse into the broad sunlit
plain. I saw no more of the armed men or the
Strangler. Panting and breathless, I paused at
last before the fence, fragrant with blossoms,
that divided my home from the solitude.

The windows of Lilian's room were darkened
—all within the house seemed still.

Darkened and silenced Home! with the light
and sounds of the jocund day all around it.
Was there yet Hope in the Universe for me?
All to which I had trusted Hope, had broken
down; the anchors I had forged for her hold
in the beds of the ocean, her stay from the drifts
of the storm, had snapped like the reeds which
pierce the side that leans on the barb of their
points, and confides in the strength of their
stems. No hope in the baffled resources of
recognised knowledge! No hope in the daring
adventures of Mind into regions unknown; vain
alike the calm lore of the practised physician,
and the magical arts of the fated Enchanter.
I had fled from the common-place teachings of
Nature, to explore in her Shadow-land marvels
at variance with reason. Made brave by the
grandeur of love, I had opposed without quailing
the stride of the Demon, and my hope, when
fruition seemed nearest, had been trodden into
dust by the hoofs of the beast! And yet, all the
while, I had scorned, as a dream more wild than
the word of a sorcerer, the hope that the old man