Oh, how beautiful she looked there in the flame! No angel out of heaven
could have worn a greater loveliness. Even now my heart faints before
the recollection of it, as she stood and smiled at our awed faces, and
I would give half my remaining time upon this earth to see her once like
that again.
But suddenly--more suddenly than I can describe--a kind of change came
over her face, a change which I could not define or explain, but none
the less a change. The smile vanished, and in its place there came a
dry, hard look; the rounded face seemed to grow pinched, as though some
great anxiety were leaving its impress upon it. The glorious eyes, too,
lost their light, and, as I thought, the form its perfect shape and
erectness.
I rubbed my eyes, thinking that I was the victim of some hallucination,
or that the refraction from the intense light produced an optical
delusion; and, as I did so, the flaming pillar slowly twisted and
thundered off whithersoever it passes to in the bowels of the great
earth, leaving Ayesha standing where it had been.
Pages:
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538