At length she spoke and her voice sounded like silver bells heard over water in a great calm. It was low and sweet, oh! so sweet that at its first notes for a moment my senses seemed to swoon and my pulse to stop. It was to me that she addressed herself.

“My servant here,” and ever so slightly she turned her head towards the kneeling Billali, “tells me that you who are named Watcher-in-the-Night, understand the tongue in which I speak to you. Is it so?”

“I understand Arabic of a kind well enough, having learned it on the East Coast and from Arabs in past years, but not such Arabic as you use, O——” and I paused.

“Call me Hiya,” she broke in, “which is my title here, meaning, as you know, She, or Woman. Or if that does not please you, call me Ayesha. It would rejoice me after so long to hear the name I bore spoken by the lips of one of my colour and of gentle blood.”

I blushed at the compliment so artfully conveyed, and repeated stupidly enough,

“—Not such Arabic as you use, O—Ayesha.”

“I thought that you would like the sound of the word better than that of Hiya, though afterwards I will teach you to pronounce it as you should, O—have you any other name save Watcher-by-Night, which seems also to be a title?”

“Yes,” I answered. “Allan.”

“—O—Allan. Tell me of these,” she went on quickly, indicating my companions with a sweep of her slender hand, “for they do not speak Arabic, I think. Or stay, I will tell you of them and you shall say if I do so rightly. This one,” and she nodded towards Robertson, “is a man bemused. There comes from him a colour which I see if you cannot, and that colour betokens a desire for revenge, though I think that in his time he has desired other things also, as I remember men always did from the beginning, to their ruin. Human nature does not change, Allan, and wine and women are ancient snares. Enough of him for this time. The little yellow one there is afraid of me, as are all of you. That is woman’s greatest power, although she is so weak and gentle, men are still afraid of her just because they are so foolish that they cannot understand her. To them after a million years she still remains the Unknown and to us all the Unknown is also the awful. Do you remember the proverb of the Romans that says it well and briefly?”

I nodded, for it was one of the Latin tags that my father had taught me.

“Good. Well, he is a little wild man, is he not, nearer to the apes from whose race our bodies come? But do you know that, Allan?”

I nodded again, and said,

“There are disputes upon the point, Ayesha.”

“Yes, they had begun in my day and we will discuss them later. Still, I say—nearer to the ape than you or I, and therefore of interest, as the germ of things is always. Yet he has qualities, I think; cunning, and fidelity and love which in its round is all in all. Do you understand, Allan, that love is all in all?”