I seemed to see this fair girl form--the yellow hair streaming down
her, glittering against her garments snowy white, and the bosom that
was whiter than the robes, even dimming with its lustre her ornaments
of burnished gold. I seemed to see the great cave filled with warriors,
bearded and clad in mail, and, on the lighted dais where Ayesha had
given judgment, a man standing, robed, and surrounded by the symbols of
his priestly office. And up the cave there came one clad in purple, and
before him and behind him came minstrels and fair maidens, chanting a
wedding song. White stood the maid against the altar, fairer than
the fairest there--purer than a lily, and more cold than the dew that
glistens in its heart. But as the man drew near she shuddered. Then out
of the press and throng there sprang a dark-haired youth, and put his
arms about this long-forgotten maid, and kissed her pale face in which
the blood shot up like lights of the red dawn across the silent sky. And
next there was turmoil and uproar, and a flashing of swords, and they
tore the youth from her arms, and stabbed him, but with a cry she
snatched the dagger from his belt, and drove it into her snowy breast,
home to the heart, and down she fell, and then, with cries and wailing,
and every sound of lamentation, the pageant rolled away from the arena
of my vision, and once more the past shut to its book.
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