"What is the matter with me? What is wrong

with my voice? What has happened?"

I laid a hand upon her forehead. "Don't bother about it now," I said,

soothingly. "Wait until sometime when you are stronger. Then I will tell you."

She sat up. "I am strong," she said, and then her eyes swept her lower body and

limbs and a look of utter horror crossed her face. "What has happened to me? In

the name of my first ancestor, what has happened to me?"

The shrill, harsh voice grated upon me. It was the voice of Xaxa and Xaxa now

must possess the sweet musical tones that alone would have harmonized with the

beautiful face she had stolen. I tried to forget those strident notes and think

only of the pulchritude of the envelope that had once graced the soul within

this old and withered carcass.

She extended a hand and laid it gently upon mine. The act was beautiful, the

movements graceful. The brain of the girl directed the muscles, but the old,

rough vocal cords of Xaxa could give forth no sweeter notes. "Tell me, please!"

she begged. There were tears in the old eyes, I'll venture for the first time in

many years. "Tell me! You do not seem unkind."

And so I told her. She listened intently and when I was through she sighed.

"After all," she said, "it is not so dreadful, now that I really know. It is

better than being dead." That made me glad that I had pressed the button. She

was glad to be alive, even draped in the hideous carcass of Xaxa. I told her as

much.

"You were so beautiful," I told her.

"And now I am so ugly?" I made no answer.

"After all, what difference does it make?" she inquired presently. "This old

body cannot change me, or make me different from what I have always been. The

good in me remains and whatever of sweetness and kindness, and I can be happy to

be alive and perhaps to do some good. I was terrified at first, because I did

not know what had happened to me. I thought that maybe I had contracted some

terrible disease that had so altered me – that horrified me; but now that I know

– pouf! what of it?"

"You are wonderful," I said. "Most women would have gone mad with the horror and

grief of it – to lose such wondrous beauty as was yours – and you do not care."

"Oh, yes, I care, my friend," she corrected me, "but I do not care enough to

ruin my life in all other respects because of it, or to cast a shadow upon the

lives of those around me. I have had my beauty and enjoyed it. It is not an

unalloyed happiness I can assure you. Men killed one another because of it; two

great nations went to war because of it; and perhaps my father lost his throne

or his life – I do not know, for I was captured by the enemy while the war still

raged. It may be raging yet and men dying because I was too beautiful. No one

will fight for me now, though," she added, with a rueful smile.

"Do you know how long you have been here?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied. "It was the day before yesterday that they brought me

hither."

"It was ten years ago," I told her.

"Ten years! Impossible."

I pointed to the corpses around us. "You have lain like this for ten years," I

explained.