nd then we proceeded together to the "kept
books" desk to collect the volumes that contained the material for our
day's work.

It was a blissful afternoon. Two and a half hours of happiness unalloyed
did I spend at that shiny, leather-clad desk, guiding my nimble pen
across the pages of the note-book. It introduced me to a new world--a
world in which love and learning, sweet intimacy and crusted
archaeology, were mingled into the oddest, most whimsical, and most
delicious confection that the mind of man can conceive. Hitherto, these
recondite histories had been far beyond my ken. Of the wonderful
heretic, Amenhotep the Fourth, I had barely heard--at the most he had
been a mere name; the Hittites a mythical race of undetermined habitat;
while cuneiform tablets had presented themselves to my mind merely as an
uncouth kind of fossil biscuit suited to the digestion of a pre-historic
ostrich.

Now all this was changed. As we sat with our chairs creaking together
and she whispered the story of those stirring times into my receptive
ear--talking is strictly forbidden in the reading-room--the disjointed
fragments arranged themselves into a romance of supreme fascination.
Egyptian, Babylonian, Aramaean, Hittite, Memphis, Babylon, Hamath,
Megiddo--I swallowed them all thankfully, wrote them down and asked for
more. Only once did I disgrace myself. An elderly clergyman of ascetic
and acidulous aspect had passed us with a glance of evident disapproval,
clearly setting us down as intruding philanderers; and when I
contrasted the parson's probable conception of the whispered
communications that were being poured into my ear so tenderly and
confidentially with the dry reality, I chuckled aloud. But my fair
task-mistress only paused, with her finger on the page, smilingly to
rebuke me, and then went on with the dictation. She was certainly a
Tartar for work.

It was a proud moment for me when, in response to my interrogative
"Yes?" my companion said "That is all" and closed the book. We had
extracted the pith and marrow of six considerable volumes in two hours
and a half.

"You have been better than your word," she said. "It would have taken me
two full days of really hard work to make the notes that you have
written down since we commenced. I don't know how to thank you."

"There's no need to. I've enjoyed myself and polished up my shorthand.
What is the next thing? We shall want some books for to-morrow, shan't
we?"

"Yes. I