`I picked it up,' I gurgled feebly, as I got on to my feet again, and it is a solemn fact that my mind was so disturbed that at the moment I could remember nothing else about the ring except that I had picked it up in Leo's cave.

`It is very strange,' she said, with a sudden access of womanlike trembling and agitation which seemed out of place in this awful woman--`but once I knew a scarab like that. It--hung round the neck--of one I loved,' and she gave a little sob, and I saw that after all she was only a woman, although she might be a very old one.

`There,' she went on, `it must be one like it, and yet never did I see one like it, for thereto hung a history, and he who wrote it prized it much.³ But the scarab that I knew was not set thus in the bezel of a ring. Go now, Holly, go, and, if thou canst, try to forget that thou hast looked upon Ayesha's beauty,' and, turning from me, she flung herself on her couch, and buried her face in the cushions.

As for me, I stumbled from her presence, and I do not remember how I reached my own cave.