Horus painted in the XVIII dynasty upon the wall.

Brilliant in colouring, green and white, with red-tipped wings, it
spreads them above the place where once was seen the painted picture of
the queen who reigned and suffered and died, thousands of years ago.

"Ah!" said Damaris, as she looked up to the corner. "It is your--your
crest--your------"

"It is a fantasy of mine. We trace my father's house right back
without a break to the days of the Pharaohs--so, I believe, does
Mohammed Ali, vendor of slippers in the bazaar." He paused, then added
abruptly, with a frown and a movement of the shoulders as though he
were trying to shift a burden, "If you will come with me to the inner
chamber, if you are not afraid, I will interpret the Story of the Hawk
to you in the shadows where it belongs."

Damaris put out her hand as though to speak, then passed into the inner
room, across the threshold of which the dogs of Billi laid themselves
down.

"Death is around us," said Hugh Carden Ali. "Do you believe in
omens?--No? Nor I. I wish there was a seat, so that you could rest
whilst I tell you------"

Damaris laid her hand gently upon his arm, and he looked down into the
face shining dead-white in the reflection of the moon which had silted
in through a hole in the roof.

"You know?"

Damaris looked up and smiled.

"Yes! I know. And, being the son of such splendid people, I cannot
understand why------"

The gates of pain and love and sacrifice were opened and the girl
shrank back against the wall as the tide of pent-up bitterness swept
around her in the ruined shrine. The man's face was white, his eyes
blazed in the agony of his hurt, whilst the dogs lifted their heads and
growled.

". . . You do not understand! You do not understand that I love you!
And, loving you, I stand a prisoner behind the bars wrought for me by
the love of my parents. That I love you as surely you never have been,
never will be loved, and that I dare not, can not ask you to be my
wife,--even if you loved me--which you do not. . . What? You do not
see why I should not marry into my mother's race even as my father did?
I will tell you why." He gripped her wrists and pulled her to him.
"Because I am the outcome of their union. My father is an Arab, my
mother an Englishwoman. I--I am a half-caste. I am nearer white,
truly, than my father, but--but my son, although he might be white or
dark,--a--a native, as you say in England--wo