This could certainly be no dream: it was real, for I was wide awake.

Indeed, what did it all mean?
Who was the ghastly, mummy-like thing which had guided us unharmed through such terrible dangers; the Messenger that all men feared, who could strike down a brawny savage with a motion of its hand?
Why did it creep into the place thus at dead of night, like a spirit revisiting one beloved?
Why did its presence cause me to awake and Leo to dream?
Why did it draw out the tress; indeed, how knew it that this tress was hidden there?
And why--oh! why, at those tender and passionate words did it flit away at last like some scared bat?
The priest Oros had called our guide Minister, and Sword, that is, one who carries out decrees.

But what if they were its own decrees?
What if this thing should be she whom we sought, _Ayesha herself ?_ Why should I tremble at the thought, seeing that if so, our quest was ended, we had achieved?
Oh! it must be because about this being there was something terrible, something un-human and appalling.

If Ayesha lived within those mummy-cloths, then it was a different Ayesha whom we had known and worshipped.

Well could I remember the white-draped form of _She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed_, and how, long before she revealed her glorious face to us, we guessed the beauty and the majesty hidden beneath that veil by which her radiant life and loveliness incarnate could not be disguised.
But what of this creature?
I would not pursue the thought.