While we had thus laboured and found, Ayesha had placed the fuel where
the moonlight fell fullest on the sward of the tableland,--a part of it
already piled as for a fire, the rest of it heaped confusedly close at
hand; and by the pile she had placed the coffer. And there she stood,
her arms folded under her mantle, her dark image seeming darker still
as the moonlight whitened all the ground from which the image rose
motionless. Margrave opened his coffer, the Veiled Woman did not aid
him, and I watched in silence, while he as silently made his weird and
wizard-like preparations.