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 dea
