urse I shall believe you--and then I
shall ask you how else you did it."

As she spoke he felt that his soul was asking itself a momentous
question. She had guessed--or did she already know?--the Great Secret.
And, if either, was she herself near enough to the dividing line between
the two worlds for him to tell her the truth?

He sat down in the chair before his writing-table and stared hard at his
plotting-pad for a few moments. Then he looked up at her and saw the
answer.

"Niti," he said slowly, and with a little halt between the words, "you
have asked me a question which I think some one else must answer, if it
can be answered at all. Look behind you!"

She turned swiftly, and there, almost beside her, stood--not the Mummy,
but the Queen, her living other-self, royal-robed and crowned as she had
been in the dim past, which was now again the present.

Would she flinch or faint, or cry out with fear? If her unconscious feet
had not advanced very near to the Border she would certainly do one or
the other. Indeed, it was with an inward quaking of fear for her that
her father had told her to turn. It might well have meant the difference
between sanity and insanity, knowing what she already did of the Mummy
and its mysterious disappearance. But no: there before his eyes was
worked again the miracle which had already been worked in his own case,
though now it was, if possible, even more marvellous than it had been
before. As Nitocris turned she uttered a low cry of wonder and
recognition, and held out both hands to her other twin-self. The Queen
took them, and said in the Ancient Tongue, which now she understood
again after many centuries:

"Welcome, thou who wast once myself, into this larger life to which the
Perfect Knowledge hath led thee: where Time is not, and that which was,
and is, and shall be are the same! Thou hast yet many days, as men call
them, to live in that limited life known as mortal, and so the mortal
lot, with its perils and sorrows and joys, shall yet be thine: yet,
although, if the High Gods will it so, that life shall end and begin and
end again many times, thou hast already won through the shadows which
bound that little life into the light of the Day which knows not dawn
nor noon nor night. I who was, and thou who art, are one again!"

Then came silence. Franklin Marmion saw the two kindred shapes merge
into each other. He closed his eyes for a moment, as he thought, and
when he opened th