noon
Perhaps you did -- who knows ! ... And now you come down through the centuries purified by Time -- '' The words slowly repeated themselves in her brain . Many and many a time she had imagined herself as having lived centuries ago , and again and again in her sleep these imaginings had reflected themselves in wild dreams of her far past -- once as a priestess of Isis , once as a Slavonian queen , once as a peasant in Syria , and many times as a courtezan of Alexandria or Athens -- many times as that : one of the gifted , beautiful , wonderful women whose houses were the centres of culture , influence , and power . She had imagined herself , against her will , as one of these women , such as Cleopatra , for whom the world were well lost ; and who , at last , having squeezed the orange dry , but while yet the sun was coming towards noon , in scorn of Life and Time had left the precincts of the cheerful day without a lingering look ... . Often and often such dreams , to her anger and confusion , had haunted her , even before she was married ; and she had been alternately humiliated and fascinated by them . Years ago she had told Ian Stafford of one of the dreams of a past life -- that she was a slave in Athens who saved her people by singing to the Tyrant ; and Ian had made her sing to him , in a voice quite in keeping with her personality , delicate and fine and wonderfully high in its range , bird-like in its quality , with trills like a lark -- a little meretricious but captivating . He had also written for her two verses which were as sharp and clear in her mind as the letter he wrote when she had thrown him over so dishonourably : `` Your voice I knew , its cadences and trill ; It stilled the tumult and the overthrow When Athens trembled to the people 's will ; I knew it -- 't was a thousand years ago .