If we lost them, and found them again
dreadful to look on, though otherwise they were the very
same, should we still love them? --L. H. H.
Well, and then we went. We went, and left those two in the presence of
the very well and spring of Life, but gathered to the cold company of
Death. How lonely they looked as they lay there, and how ill assorted!
That little heap had been for two thousand years the wisest, loveliest,
proudest creature--I can hardly call her woman--in the whole universe.
She had been wicked, too, in her way; but, alas! such is the frailty
of the human heart, her wickedness had not detracted from her charm.
Indeed, I am by no means certain that it did not add to it. It was after
all of a grand order, there was nothing mean or small about Ayesha.
And poor Job too! His presentiment had come true, and there was an end
of him. Well, he has a strange burial-place--no Norfolk hind ever had a
stranger, or ever will; and it is something to lie in the same sepulchre
as the poor remains of the imperial _She_.
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