She and Allan
Page 49
This was the last that I saw of the glorious Ayesha, if indeed I did seeher and not her ghost. Yet it is true that for all the first part of thejourney, till we were through the great swamp in fact, from time totime I was conscious, or imagined that I was conscious of her presence.Moreover, once others saw her, or someone who might have been her. Ithappened thus.
We were in the centre of the great swamp and the trained guides who wereleading came to a place where the path forked and were uncertainwhich road to take. Finally they fixed on the right-hand path and werepreparing to follow it together with those who bore the litter of Inez,by the side of which Hans was walking as usual.
At this moment, as Hans told me, the guides went down upon their facesand he saw standing in front of them a white-veiled form who pointed tothe left-hand path, and then seemed to be lost in the mist. Without aword the guides rose and followed this left-hand path. Hans stopped thelitter till I came up when he told me what had happened, while Inez alsobegan to chatter in her childish fashion about a "White Lady."
I had the curiosity to walk a little way along the right-hand path whichthey were about to take. Only a few yards further on I found myselfsinking in a floating quagmire, from which I extricated myself with muchdifficulty but just in time for as I discovered afterwards by probingwith a pole, the water beneath the matted reeds was deep. That nightI questioned the guides upon the subject, but without result, for theypretended to have seen nothing and not to understand what I meant. Ofneither of these incidents have I any explanation to offer, exceptthat once contracted, it is as difficult to be rid of the habit ofhallucinations as of any other.