cance--like
incense. Anyway it relieves my feelings."

Then she laughed and threw the remains of the ribbon into the fire,
adding,

"If you say a word about those people I'll leave the room."

I think we had one of the jolliest breakfasts I ever remember. To begin
with we were both hungry since our miseries of the night before had
prevented us from eating any dinner. Indeed she swore that she had
scarcely tasted food since Saturday. Then we had such a lot to talk
about. With short intervals we talked all that day, either in the house
or while walking through the gardens and grounds. Passing through the
latter I came to the spot on the back drive where once I had saved her
from being abducted by Harut and Marut, and as I recognized it, uttered
an exclamation. She asked me why and the end of it was that I told her
all that story which to this moment she had never heard, for Ragnall had
thought well to keep it from her.

She listened intently, then said,

"So I owe you more than I knew. Yet, I'm not sure, for you see I was
abducted after all. Also if I had been taken there, probably George
would never have married me or seen me again, and that might have been
better for him."

"Why?" I asked. "You were all the world to him."

"Is any woman ever all the world to a man, Mr. Quatermain?"

I hesitated, expecting some attack.

"Don't answer," she went on, "it would be too long and you wouldn't
convince me who have been in the East. However, he was all the world
to me. Therefore his welfare was what I wished and wish, and I think he
would have had more of it if he had never married me."

"Why?" I asked again.

"Because I brought him no good luck, did I? I needn't go through all
the story as you know it. And in the end it was through me that he was
killed in Egypt."

"Or through the goddess Isis," I broke in rather nervously.

"Yes, the goddess Isis, a part I have played in my time, or something
like it. And he was killed in the temple of the goddess Isis. And those
papyri of which you read the translations in the museum, which were
given to me in Kendah Land, seem to have come from that same temple.
And--how about the Ivory Child? Isis in the temple evidently held a
child in her arms, but when we found her it had gone. Supposing this
child was the same as that of which I was guardian! It might have been,
since the papyri came from that temple. What do you think?"

"I don't think anything," I answered, "except t