Presently, of a sudden, I appeared to see Ayesha seated in a temple,for there were columns about her, and behind her was an altar on whicha fire burned. All round her, too, were hooded snakes like to that whichshe wore about her middle, fashioned in gold. To these snakes she sangand they danced to her singing; yes, with flickering tongues they dancedupon their tails! What the scene signified I cannot conceive, unless itmeant that this mistress of magic was consulting her familiars.
Then that vision vanished and Ayesha's voice began to seem very far awayand dreamy, also her wondrous beauty became visible to me through herveil, as though I had acquired a new sense that overcame the limitationsof mortal sight. Even in this extremity I reflected it was well that thelast thing I looked on should be something so glorious. No, not quitethe last thing, for out of the corners of my eyes I saw that Umslopogaasfrom a sitting position had sunk on to his back and lay, apparentlydead, with his axe still gripped tightly and held above his head, asthough his arm had been turned to ice.
After this terrible things began to happen to me and I became aware thatI was dying. A great wind seemed to catch me up and blow me to and fro,as a leaf is blown in the eddies of a winter gale. Enormous rushes ofdarkness flowed over me, to be succeeded by vivid bursts of brightnessthat dazzled like lightning. I fell off precipices and at the foot ofthem was caught by some fearful strength and tossed to the very skies.
From those skies I was hurled down again into a kind of whirlpool ofinky night, round which I spun perpetually, as it seemed for hours andhours. But worst of all was the awful loneliness from which I suffered.It seemed to me as though there were no other living thing in all theUniverse and never had been and never would be any other living thing. Ifelt as though _I_ were the Universe rushing solitary through space forages upon ages in a frantic search for fellowship, and finding none.
Then something seemed to grip my throat and I knew that I had died--forthe world floated away from beneath me.
Now fear and every mortal sensation left me, to be replaced by a new andspiritual terror. I, or rather my disembodied consciousness, seemed tocome up for judgment, and the horror of it was that I appeared to be myown judge. There, a very embodiment of cold justice, my Spirit,grown luminous, sat upon a throne and to it, with dread and mercilessparticularity I set out all my misdeeds. It was as if some part of meremained mortal, for I could see my two eyes, my mouth and my hands, butnothing else--and strange enough they looked. From the eyes came tears,from the mouth flowed words and the hands were joined, as though inprayer to that throned and adamantine Spirit which was ME.
It was as though this Spirit were asking how my body had servedits purposes and advanced its mighty ends, and in reply--oh! what amiserable tale I had to tell. Fault upon fault, weakness upon weakness,sin upon sin; never before did I understand how black was my record. Itried to relieve the picture with some incidents of attempted good, butthat Spirit would not hearken. It seemed to say that it had gathered upthe good and knew it all. It was of the evil that it would learn, notof the good that had bettered it, but of the evil by which it had beenharmed.
Hearing this there rose up in my consciousness some memory of whatAyesha had said; namely, that the body lived within the temple of thespirit which is oft defied, and not the spirit in the body.
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