en them, he was reminded, to have her accept so obediently any
point-blank request of his. But for the nonce he was glad. He wanted
those few minutes desperately.

"What is it?" she murmured.

"I'll show you," and then, as he turned from the way they had come
and followed a winding path that dipped lower and lower between the
dune-like piles of sand, "It's the Sacred Lake," he explained.
"Perhaps you've seen it in the daytime--but I've been wanting to see
it at night."

"I think I just caught the glint of it from the pylon," she
observed.

"You had time to," said Billy, trying to twinkle down at her in
friendly fashion.

She did not twinkle back. She looked as suddenly guilty as a kitten
in the cream, and Billy's heart smote him heavily. He did not speak
again till they had rounded a corner and their path had brought them
out upon the shore of the Sacred Lake.

Like a little horseshoe it circled about three sides of the ruined
temple of the goddess Mut, inky-black and motionless with the stars
looking up uncannily like drowned lights from its still waters, and
inky-black and motionless, like guardian spirits about it, sat a
hundred cat-headed women of grim granite. It was a spot of stark
loneliness and utter silence, of ancient terror and desolate
abandonment; the solitude and the blackness and the aching age smote
upon the imagination like a heavy hand upon harp strings.

"Who are--they?" Arlee spoke in a hushed voice, as if the cat-headed
women were straining their ears.

"They're mysteries," said Billy, speaking in the same low tone.
"Generally they're said to be statues of the Goddess Pasht or
Sehket--but it's a riddle why the Amen-hotep person who built this
temple to the goddess Mut should have put Sehket here. Sehket is in
the trinity of Memphis--and Mut in that of Thebes. And so some
people say that this is not Pasht at all, but Mut herself, who was
sometimes represented as lion-headed. Between a giant cat and a
lion, you know, there's not much of difference."

"I like Pasht better than Mut," said Arlee decidedly.

"There you agree with Baedecker."

"What did Pasht do?"

"She was goddess of girls," said Billy, "and young wives. She got
the girls husbands and the wives--er--their requests. Girls used to
come down here at night and make a prayer to her and cast an
offering into the waters."

"And then they had their prayer?"

"Infallibly."

"I'd like a guardian like that," said Arlee, with a