She walked quietly because the spirit of the place was upon her, the
spirit which puts a hand upon your mouth so that words shall not
disturb the ghosts of the past, and which blinds your eyes so that you
look back upon that hour as on a dream.

Yet, as she passed through pylon, vestibule and the Great Court, she
stopped and turned, went on, and stopped again to listen.

There was no sound.

Flashing her light upon part of a fallen column, she sat down upon it,
with the purple sky studded with stars as roof above her head and the
sands of ages as carpet to her feet.

And as she sat, so still, her thoughts turned to the man who had said
he loved her and who yet seemed so content to leave her quite alone.

A woman may refuse a man's honest proposal of marriage and have no
intention whatever of marrying him, even later on, but that does not
mean he need necessarily take her at her word to the extent of retiring
altogether from the horizon of her life.

As for the rest, the flowers upon her breakfast-table, her rides at
dawn--about that she instinctively kept her thoughts in check. It was
like the cut-glass bottle of perfume which you are not allowed to use,
on account of your youth; the first few lines of the first novel you
filched from your mother's book-stand that afternoon she was out; the
first time you put on a real evening dress and wound a fichu about your
neck before you opened your bedroom door.

And as she sat there fell a little sound.

Bits of masonry as big as a bowl or as small as a marble are quite
likely to fall upon your pate in colossal ruins, but, remembering the
vague uneasiness which had caused her to stop and listen, further back,
she sat forward and switched on her light.

Against the wall opposite her, entirely robed in black, with a
glittering jewel clasping a corner of the great black mantle swinging
from the shoulders, there stood a man.

There was no sign of the paralysing terror which swept the girl; her
face, which had gone dead-white, was in shadow, her hands under control.

For a moment she sat breathless, then flashed the light full into the
face of the man who had stalked her through the temple, then flashed it
back to the jewel, then sighed--an unutterable sigh of relief.

The jewel was in the shape of a hawk, the symbol of Ancient Egypt.

Just for a moment they stayed in utter silence, those two who for all
we know may have met and parted in this very spot in the days