XIV

A SOUL IN HELL

It was nearly ten o'clock at night when I cast myself down upon my bed,
and began to gather my scattered wits, and reflect upon what I had seen
and heard. But the more I reflected the less I could make of it. Was I
mad, or drunk, or dreaming, or was I merely the victim of a gigantic
and most elaborate hoax? How was it possible that I, a rational man,
not unacquainted with the leading scientific facts of our history, and
hitherto an absolute and utter disbeliever in all the hocus-pocus which
in Europe goes by the name of the supernatural, could believe that I had
within the last few minutes been engaged in conversation with a woman
two thousand and odd years old? The thing was contrary to the experience
of human nature, and absolutely and utterly impossible. It must be a
hoax, and yet, if it were a hoax, what was I to make of it? What, too,
was to be said of the figures on the water, of the woman's extraordinary
acquaintance with the remote past, and her ignorance, or apparent
ignorance, of any subsequent history? What, too, of her wonderful and
awful loveliness? This, at any rate, was a patent fact, and beyond the
experience of the world. No merely mortal woman could shine with such
a supernatural radiance. About that she had, at any rate, been in the
right--it was not safe for any man to look upon such beauty. I was
a hardened vessel in such matters, having, with the exception of one
painful experience of my green and tender youth, put the softer sex
(I sometimes think that this is a misnomer) almost entirely out of my
thoughts. But now, to my intense horror, I _knew_ that I could never put
away the vision of those glorious eyes; and alas! the very _diablerie_