I have not the slightest doubt myself but
that the frame now lying before me was just what the frame of a woman
would be if by any extraordinary means life could be preserved in her
till she at length died at the age of two-and-twenty centuries.
But who can tell what had happened? There was the fact. Often since that
awful hour I have reflected that it requires no great imagination to see
the finger of Providence in the matter. Ayesha locked up in her living
tomb waiting from age to age for the coming of her lover worked but a
small change in the order of the World. But Ayesha strong and happy in
her love, clothed in immortal youth and goddess beauty, and the wisdom
of the centuries, would have revolutionised society, and even perchance
have changed the destiny of Mankind. Thus she opposed herself against
the eternal law, and, strong though she was, by it was swept back to
nothingness--swept back with shame and hideous mockery!
For some minutes I lay faintly turning these terrors over in my mind,
while my physical strength came back to me, which it quickly did in that
buoyant atmosphere.
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