第89章

"Almost dost thou begin to love me, Kallikrates," she answered, smiling."And now tell me of thy country'tis a great people, is it not? with an empire like that of Rome! Surely thou wouldst return thither, and it is well, for I mean not that thou shouldst dwell in these caves of Ko^r.Nay, when once thou art even as Iam, we will go hencefear not but that I shall find a pathand then shall we cross to this England of thine, and live as it becometh us to live.Two thousand years have I waited for the day when I should see the last of these hateful caves and this gloomy-visaged folk, and now it is at hand, and my heart bounds up to meet it like a child's towards its holiday.For thou shalt rule this England""But we have a queen already," broke in Leo, hastily.

"It is naught, it is naught," said Ayesha, "she can be overthrown." At this we both broke out into an exclamation of dismay, and explained that we should as soon think of overthrowing ourselves.

"But here is a strange thing," said Ayesha, in astonishment; "a queen whom her people love! Surely the world must have changed since I dwelt in Ko^r."Again we explained that it was the character of monarchs that had changed, and that the one under whom we lived was venerated and beloved by all right-thinking people in her vast realms.Also, we told her that real power in our country rested in the hands of the people, and that we were in fact ruled by the votes of the lower and least educated classes of the community.

"Ah," she said, "a democracythen surely there is a tyrant, for I have long since seen that democracies, having no clear will of their own, in the end set up a tyrant, and worship him.""Yes," I said, "we have our tyrants."

"Well," she answered, resignedly, "we can at any rate destroy these tyrants, and Kallikrates shall rule the land."I instantly informed Ayesha that in England "blasting"was not an amusement that could be indulged in with impunity, and that any such attempt would meet with the consideration of the law and probably end upon a scaffold.

"The law," she laughed, with scorn-"the law! Canst thou not understand, O Holly, that I am above the law, and so shall my Kallikrates be also? All human law will be to us as the north wind to a mountain.Does the wind bend the mountain, or the mountain the wind?

"And now leave me, I pray thee, and thou too, my own Kallikrates, for I would get me ready against our journey, and so must ye both, and your servant also.

But bring no great quantity of things with.thee, for I trust that we shall be but three days gone.Then shall we return hither, and I will make a plan whereby we can bid farewell forever to these sepulchres of Ko^r.Yes, surely thou mayst kiss my hand!"So we went, I, for one, meditating deeply on the awful nature of the problem that now opened out before us.

The terrible _i_ She _i_ had evidently made up her mind to go to England, and it made me absolutely shudder to think what would be the result of her arrival there.What her powers were I knew, and Icould not doubt but that she would exercise them to the full.It might be possible to control her for a while, but her proud, ambitious spirit would be certain to break loose and avenge itself for the long centuries of its solitude._i_ She _i_ would, if necessary, and if the power of her beauty did not unaided prove equal to the occasion, blast her way to any end she set before her, and, as she could not die, and for aught I knew could not even be killed, what was there to stop her? In the end she would, I had little doubt, assume absolute rule over the British dominions, and probably over the whole earth, and, though I was sure that she would speedily make ours the most glorious and prosperous empire that the world has ever seen, it would be at the cost of a terrible sacrifice of life.

The whole thing sounded like a dream or some extraordinary invention of a speculative brain, and yet it was a facta wonderful factwhich the whole world would soon be called on to take notice.What was the meaning of it all? After much thinking I could only conclude that this wonderful creature, whose passion had kept her for so many centuries chained, as it were, and comparatively harmless, was now about to be used by Providence as a means to change the order of the world, and possibly, by the building up of a power that could no more be rebelled against or questioned than the decrees of Fate, to change it materially for the better.