I can tell you she looked really royal, like a princess in a fairy book, with a crown on, and her chestnut black hair flowing round her.
"Well, Horace, then she began to make love to me in a refined sort of way, or so I thought, looked at me and sighed, saying that we had known each other in the past--very well indeed I gathered--and implying that she wished to continue our friendship.

I fenced with her as best I could; but a man feels fairly helpless lying on his back with a very handsome and very imperial-looking lady standing over him and paying him compliments.
"The end of it was that, driven to it by her questions and to stop that sort of thing, I told her that I was looking for my wife, whom I had lost, for, after all, Ayesha is my wife, Horace.

She smiled and suggested that I need _not_ look far; in short, that the lost wife was already found--in herself, who had come to save me from death in the river.

Indeed, she spoke with such conviction that I grew sure that she was not merely amusing herself, and felt very much inclined to believe her, for, after all, Ayesha may be changed now.
"Then while I was at my wits' end I remembered the lock of hair--all that remains to us of _her_," and Leo touched his breast.

"I drew it out and compared it with the Khania's, and at the sight of it she became quite different, jealous, I suppose, for it is longer than hers, and not in the least like.
"Horace, I tell you that the touch of that lock of hair--for she did touch it--appeared to act upon her nature like nitric acid upon sham gold.