She and Allan | Page 3

H. Rider Haggard
had been my fortune to meet. Glancing from it to the
printed page one word seemed to leap at me. It was /Kôr/! Now of
veiled women there are plenty in the world, but were there also two
Kôrs?
Then I turned to the beginning and began to read. This happened in the
autumn when the sun does not rise till about six, but it was broad
daylight before I ceased from reading, or rather rushing through that
book.
Oh! what was I to make of it? For here in its pages (to say nothing of
old Billali, who, by the way lied, probably to order, when he told Mr.
Holly that no white man had visited his country for many generations,
and those gloomy, man-eating Amahagger scoundrels) once again I
found myself face to face with /She-who-commands/, now rendered as
/She-who- must-be-obeyed/, which means much the same thing--in her
case at least; yes, with Ayesha the lovely, the mystic, the changeful and
the imperious.
Moreover the history filled up many gaps in my own limited
experiences of that enigmatical being who was half divine (though, I
think, rather wicked or at any rate unmoral in her way) and yet all
woman. It is true that it showed her in lights very different from and
higher than those in which she had presented herself to me. Yet the
substratum of her character was the same, or rather of her characters,
for of these she seemed to have several in a single body, being, as she
said of herself to me, "not One but Many and not Here but
Everywhere."
Further, I found the story of Kallikrates, which I had set down as a
mere falsehood invented for my bewilderment, expanded and explained.
Or rather not explained, since, perhaps that she might deceive, to me
she had spoken of this murdered Kallikrates without enthusiasm, as a
handsome person to whom, because of an indiscretion of her youth, she
was bound by destiny and whose return--somewhat to her sorrow--she
must wait. At least she did so at first, though in the end when she bared
her heart at the moment of our farewell, she vowed she loved him only

and was "appointed" to him "by a divine decree."
Also I found other things of which I knew nothing, such as the Fire of
Life with its fatal gift of indefinite existence, although I remember that
like the giant Rezu whom Umslopogaas defeated, she did talk of a
"Cup of Life" of which she had drunk, that might have been offered to
my lips, had I been politic, bowed the knee and shown more faith in her
and her supernatural pretensions.
Lastly I saw the story of her end, and as I read it I wept, yes, I confess I
wept, although I feel sure that she will return again. Now I understood
why she had quailed and even seemed to shrivel when, in my last
interview with her, stung beyond endurance by her witcheries and
sarcasms, I had suggested that even for her with all her powers, Fate
might reserve one of its shrewdest blows. Some prescience had told her
that if the words seemed random, Truth spoke through my lips,
although, and this was the worst of it, she did not know what weapon
would deal the stroke or when and where it was doomed to fall.
I was amazed, I was overcome, but as I closed that book I made up my
mind, first that I would continue to preserve absolute silence as to
Ayesha and my dealings with her, as, during my life, I was bound by
oath to do, and secondly that I would /not/ cause my manuscript to be
destroyed. I did not feel that I had any right to do so in view of what
already had been published to the world. There let it lie to appear one
day, or not to appear, as might be fated. Meanwhile my lips were sealed.
I would give Good back his book without comment and--buy another
copy!
One more word. It is clear that I did not touch more than the fringe of
the real Ayesha. In a thousand ways she bewitched and deceived me so
that I never plumbed her nature's depths. Perhaps this was my own fault
because from the first I shewed a lack of faith in her and she wished to
pay me back in her own fashion, or perhaps she had other private
reasons for her secrecy. Certainly the character she discovered to me
differed in many ways from that which she revealed to Mr. Holly and
to Leo Vincey, or Kallikrates, whom, it seems, once she slew in her
jealousy and rage.

She told me as much as she thought it fit that I
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