it?"

"If you ask Lampton, he'll tell you that I'm not quite in my normal
senses--that I frequently walk on my head."

"Lampton's a sound man."

"Well, that's his opinion."

"You're a rum chap," the stranger said, as he noticed that a glint of
humour had for the moment driven the expression of exhaustion from
Michael's eyes. "Anyhow, I hope you'll not feel too knocked up when
you arrive in camp, and that we'll meet again."

"I feel as if I could sleep for a year."

"Have another whisky before you go?"

"No thanks. I think one has been more than enough--it's made me
confoundedly tired."

They were standing at the open front of the tent.

"Good-bye," Michael said. "And thanks most awfully for your
hospitality. I suppose you won't settle on the work here until next
season?"

"No, it will be hot enough at the end of three weeks, though it's
cooler here than with Lampton in the Valley. If the money is
forthcoming, we shall take up work again next October."

They parted abruptly, as Englishmen do. Two _fellahin_, mere hewers of
wood and drawers of water, would have gone through a set formula of
graceful words before they separated. They are ever mindful of the
teachings of the Koran, which says:

"If you are greeted with a greeting, then greet ye with a better
greeting. God taketh account of all things."

Michael had turned his back on the stranger and the waving flag.
Mechanically he put his hand to his belt-pouch. Yes, the crimson
amethyst was still there. He felt for it as though he were in a dream.
The bright light made him giddy. The stone was his link with and his
tangible assurance that the life which he had led for the past weeks
was a reality; it was his sacred token that the vision of Akhnaton was
no mere phantom of an over-imaginative brain. Yet, even as he felt its
hard substance between his thumb and forefinger, he wondered if it was
really there. He knew that imagination can create strange things;
phantom tumours have been produced by imagination, tumours which are
visible to a physician's eye while the patient is conscious and his
mind obsessed with the conviction that it is there; he knew that such
swellings disappear when the patient is asleep. He felt dazed, and as
if he himself were unreal; his feet refused to tread firmly on the
earth; they never managed to reach it. When he looked for Abdul and
the camels, they were floating in the heavens above the horizon, miles
and mile