s self-importance."

"In Cairo they belong to a number and a glass case," Mike said. "They
lose their individuality."

"Here they are a part of Egypt, that ancient, undying Egypt! You and
I, like those dogs, Mike, won't have even bones to record us after
three thousand years. Our bowels of tenderness will not lie intact in
alabaster jars! Oh, Mike, take me in your arms! I want humanity, I
want the things of to-day, I want all which that mummy has ridiculed!
I hated it, Mike! I love life and your love! I want to forget that we
are here to-day and gone to-morrow, mere human gnats."

Mike held her close to his heart. Meg could hear it beating. Oh,
beloved humanity! Oh, dear human flesh and blood!

"That's lovely, Mike--that's you and me! That's our certain human
love, our happiness! It is worth while, and it's not going to be like
the running out of an hour-glass while an egg is boiling! It's going
to last for ages and ages, isn't it? Say it is, Mike!"

"Yes, beloved." Mike kissed her hands.

She drew them away. "Don't kiss them, Mike. I feel as if they will be
dried skeletons by to-morrow, and as if your lips, dearest, will have
shrunk and shrunk right back until your teeth gape out of your hideous
brown skull up to the blue above. Do you wonder that Akhnaton prayed
so ardently that his spirit might come out and see the sun?"

Meg's head was buried in her hands. She was visualizing again the
wonderful scene, which had taught her the mockery of all things which
had formerly appeared so precious and important. It seemed to her at
the moment that to sit down in the desert under the blue sky, and there
wait for death, was the only thing to do. Nothing really mattered.
Eternity enthralled her. Her happiness with Mike was but the swift
hurrying of a white cloud across a summer sky, the work of the
Exploration School a mere illustration of worldly vanity. In the great
chaos which possessed her soul there was no light to comfort her. In
looking into the past she had unexpectedly seen into the future. She
had beheld the scorn and callousness of eternity.

Oddly enough, it was Michael who helped her to pull herself together
and turn her thoughts to practical things, to the needs of the day.
His more mystical nature, his familiarity with the mythology of Egypt
and other occult subjects, had in a measure prepared his mind for the
things which had burst suddenly upon Meg's practical nature. He had
be