from after experience, an astral body
subject to a free will and an active intelligence. With that astral
body, space ceased to exist. The vast distance between London and
Aswan became as naught; and whatever power of necromancy the Sorceress
had might have been exercised over the dead mother, and possibly the
dead child.

The dead child! Was it possible that the child was dead and was made
alive again? Whence then came the animating spirit--the soul? Logic
was pointing the way to me now with a vengeance!

If the Egyptian belief was true for Egyptians, then the "Ka" of the
dead Queen and her "Khu" could animate what she might choose. In such
case Margaret would not be an individual at all, but simply a phase of
Queen Tera herself; an astral body obedient to her will!

Here I revolted against logic. Every fibre of my being resented such a
conclusion. How could I believe that there was no Margaret at all; but
just an animated image, used by the Double of a woman of forty
centuries ago to its own ends...! Somehow, the outlook was brighter to
me now, despite the new doubts.

At least I had Margaret!

Back swung the logical pendulum again. The child then was not dead.
If so, had the Sorceress had anything to do with her birth at all? It
was evident--so I took it again from Corbeck--that there was a strange
likeness between Margaret and the pictures of Queen Tera. How could
this be? It could not be any birth-mark reproducing what had been in
the mother's mind; for Mrs. Trelawny had never seen the pictures. Nay,
even her father had not seen them till he had found his way into the
tomb only a few days before her birth. This phase I could not get rid
of so easily as the last; the fibres of my being remained quiet. There
remained to me the horror of doubt. And even then, so strange is the
mind of man, Doubt itself took a concrete image; a vast and
impenetrable gloom, through which flickered irregularly and
spasmodically tiny points of evanescent light, which seemed to quicken
the darkness into a positive existence.

The remaining possibility of relations between Margaret and the mummied
Queen was, that in some occult way the Sorceress had power to change
places with the other. This view of things could not be so lightly
thrown aside. There were too many suspicious circumstances to warrant
this, now that my attention was fixed on it and my intelligence
recognised the possibility. Hereupon there began to co