shaven, and handed out three ladies. The first lady was
middle-aged and haughty featured, in a black evening gown overhung
with a black and gold Assiout shawl; the second was a tall girl in a
rose cloak, the third was a small girl, and her cloak was a delicate
blue.

There was a pause at the pylon for the presentation of the little
red entrance books, and then the gate closed behind them, and the
five moved cautiously forward into the shadowy dark of the confusion
of the ruins. Beside the blue-cloaked girl bent the sandy-haired
young man; the black-haired young man was between the rose-cloaked
girl and the lady with the Roman nose.

"You must be our dragoman, Mr. Hill; I understand you are up on all
this," said the lady, adhering closely to his side. "Where are we
now?"

"Temple of Khonsu," said Billy with bitter brevity. Ahead of them
Arlee's blonde head was uptilted toward Falconer's remarks.

"Khonsu? I never heard of him! Or is it her?" Lady Claire laughingly
demanded.

"Khonsu is the son of the god, Amon, or Amon-Ra, and the goddess,
Mut, and so is the third person of the trinity of Thebes," Billy
pedagogically recited, his eyes on the little white shoes ahead
picking their delicate way over the fallen stones. "This temple at
Karnak is the temple of the god Amon, and so it was natural for old
Rameses the third to put the temple to Khonsu under the father's
wing like this--but it spoils the effect of the entrance from this
pylon. You don't get Karnak's bigness at a burst--but wait till you
reach the court ahead. Then you'll see Karnak."

And then they did see it--as much as one view can give of that vast
desolation. Ahead of them, shadowy and mysterious in the velvet dark
and silver pallor of the stars, loomed the columns of the great
court, huge monoliths that dwarfed to pigmies the tiny groups of
people dotting the ground about them, trying to say something
appropriate.

The place had been made for dead and gone gods, giants of gods, and
their spirits stalked now through its waste spaces, dominating and
ironic. There was an air about the place that seemed to scorn the
facile awe it woke in the breasts of the beholders and that fleered
at the human banalities upon their lips.

"There are no words for a spot like this," said a voice near them.

"Silence is fittest," corroborated a second voice.

"Thomas Hardy once said, speaking of the heavens," said the first
voice again, "'There is a size at which d