“And now in my dream the story grew around me, and I lived within it, as is the custom in my dreams. I heard and saw the people speaking and moving of whom I tell.
“I was in a darkened chamber, silver lamps hanging from a low ceiling, the air heavy with sweet essences, and I was one of the queens.
“We were gathered in this room to kill ourselves, but within my heart I knew I intended to do no such thing. For while they pricked themselves with a poisoned needle, I was going to pretend to do so, and when they had died I meant to make my escape. Determining thus, I had thrust my poisoned needle deeply out of sight into the earth, in the garden of the palace.
“Now in my dream I looked around me. There was no sound in the room but a soft moaning, and I saw shrouded forms lying on low couches, wrapped round with silk.
“I lay on a great bed, and close beside me lay the youngest queen, and I dreamed that her name was Ayilmah. Her voice was speaking to me very quietly, in the dusk of that darkened room.
“‘Where hast thou pricked thyself?’ she was saying.
“‘In the slender part of my wrist,’ I answered, lyingly, and I dreamed she expressed great sorrow at my words.
“‘Oh, why hast thou done it there?’ she cried. ‘Dost thou not know that the pain will grow and grow, till at last it will get past bearing. And death tarries while the pain grows. Why didst thou do it there? Dost thou not suffer exceedingly?’
“And I, in my dream, replied once more lyingly: ‘My life is already so numb within me that I feel no pain.’ Then I thought she put her hand into mine to comfort me, and even as her fingers closed round mine, I felt her hand’s warmth, and the movement of it, cease. Hurriedly I slipped my hand higher, and I found her arm was chill, and now the rounded fingers in mine were cold like small columns of polished jade.
“Then I knew she lay dead beside me, and suddenly I was filled with a great awe. I started up and cried, ‘Listen, I have done you a great wrong.’ But everything was very quiet. There was no answer to my words.