While I sat thus many reflections came to me as to the extraordinarynature of my experiences during the past few days. Had any man everknown the like, I wondered? What could they mean and what could thismarvellous woman Ayesha be? Was she perhaps a personification of Natureitself, as indeed to some extent all women are? Was she human at all,or was she some spirit symbolising a departed people, faith andcivilisation, and haunting the ruins where once she reigned as queen?No, the idea was ridiculous, since such beings do not exist, though itwas impossible to doubt that she possessed powers beyond those of commonhumanity, as she possessed beauty and fascination greater than are givento any other woman.
Of one thing I was certain, however, that the Shades I had seemedto visit had their being in the circle of her own imagination andintelligence. There Umslopogaas was right; we had seen no dead, we hadonly seen pictures and images that she drew and fashioned.
Why did she do this, I wondered. Perhaps to pretend to powers which shedid not possess, perhaps out of sheer elfish mischief, or perhaps, asshe asserted, just to teach us a lesson and to humble us in our ownsight. Well, if so she had succeeded, for never did I feel so crushedand humiliated as at that moment.
I had seemed to descend, or ascend, into Hades, and there had only seenthings that gave me little joy and did but serve to reopen old wounds.Then, on awaking, I had been bewitched; yes, fresh from those visionsof the most dear dead, I had been bewitched by the overpowering magic ofthis woman's loveliness and charm, and made a fool of myself, only to bebrought back to my senses by her triumphant mockery. Oh, I was humbledindeed, and yet the odd thing is that I could not feel angry with her,and what is more that, perhaps from vanity, I believed in her professionof friendship towards myself.
Well, the upshot of it was that, like Umslopogaas, more than anythingelse in the world did I desire to depart from this haunted Kor and tobury all its recollections in such activities as fortune might bring tome. And yet, and yet it was well to have seen it and to have plucked theflower of such marvellous experience, nor, as I knew even then, could Iever inter the memory of Ayesha the wise, the perfect in all loveliness,and the half-divine in power.
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