e. My very soul
revolted against this profanation of the ancient royal dead. To left and
right upon the slopes above and perhaps beneath the very path along
which the gross Teuton was retiring lay those who ruled the world ere
Rome bestrode the seven hills, whose body-slaves were princes when the
proud states and empires of to-day slumbered unborn in the womb of Time.
Seti I! what a name of power! His face, Don, is unforgettable and his
image seems to haunt those subterranean halls in which at last he had
thought to find rest. To-day his tomb is a public resort, his alabaster
sarcophagus an exhibit at the Sloane Museum, and his body, stripped of
its regal raiment, is lying exposed to curious eyes in a glass case in
Cairo!

"We honour the departed of our own times, and tread lightly in God's
acre; why, because they passed from the world before Western
civilisation had raised its head above primeval jungles, should we fail
in our respect for Egypt's mightier dead? I tell you, Don, there is not
one man in a million who understands; who, having the eyes to see, the
ears to hear, has the soul to comprehend. And this understanding is a
lonely, sorrowful gift. I looked out from an observation-post on the
Somme over a landscape like the blasted heath in _Macbeth_. No living
thing moved, but the earth was pregnant with agony and the roar of the
guns from hidden pits was like that of the grindstones of hell. There,
upon the grave of an epoc, I listened to that deathly music and it
beckoned to me like the palm fronds of Mitrahina and spoke the same
message as the voice of the pyramid silence. Don! all that has ever
been, is, and within us dwells the first and the last."

VII

A silence fell between them which endured for a long time, such an
understanding silence as is only possible in rare friendships. Paul
began to fill his pipe, and Don almost regretfully broke the spell. "My
real mission," he said, "is to release you from a bargain into which you
entered blindfolded, without realising that you had to deal with an
utterly unprincipled partner."

"Whatever do you mean?"

"I owe a debt to the late Michael Duveen, Paul, which you generously
offered to assist me in liquidating----"

Paul reached over and grasped Don's arm. "Stop there!" he cried, "and
hear me. You are going to say that my enthusiasm has cooled----"

"I am going to say nothing of the kind."

"Ah, but you think it is so. Yet you know me so well, Don, that