ld be a lesson to him. Never
again. No more masked young things with their stolen keys and their
harem entrances. No more whispered tales of woe in a shady garden.
No more--

Violently he wrenched himself from his No Mores. Recollection had a
way of stirring an unpleasant tumult.

But it was all over. He had forgotten it--he _would_ forget it. He
would forget _her_. Work, that was the thing. Normal, sensible,
every day work.

But there was no joy in this tonic work. Somewhere, between a night
and a morning, he had lost that glow of accomplishment which had
buoyed him, which had made him fairly ecstatic over the discovery of
this very tomb.

For this tomb was his own find. It had been found long before by the
plundering Persians, and it had been found by Arabs who had
plundered the Persian remains--but between and after those findings
the oblivious sands had swept over it, blotting it from the world,
choking the entrance hall and the shafts, seeping through
half-sealed entrances and packing its dry drift over the rifled
sarcophagus of the king and over the withered mummy of the young
girl in the ante-room. The tombs had been cleared now, down almost
to the stone floors, and Ryder was busy with the drifts that had
lodged in the crevices about the entrance to the shaft.

It was really an important find. Although much plundered, the walls
were intact, and the delicate carvings in the white limestone walls
were exceptional examples. And there were some very interesting
things to decipher. A scholar and an explorer could well be
enthusiastic.

But Ryder continued to look far from enthusiastic. Even when his
groping fingers, searching a cranny, came in contact with a hard
substance his face did not change to any lightning radiance.
Unexpectantly he picked up the sand-encrusted lump and brushed it
off. A gleam of gold shone in his hand. But it was no ancient amulet
or necklace or breast guard--nor was it any bit of the harness of
the plundering Persians. It was a locket, very heavily and ornately
carved.

He stood a moment staring down at the thing with a curious feeling
of having stood staring down at exactly the same thing before--that
subconscious feeling of the repetition of events which supports the
theories of reincarnationists--and then, quite suddenly, memory came
to his aid.

In McLean's office. That day of the masquerade. Those visiting
Frenchmen and that locket they had shown him. Of course the thing
re