d and
shrieked at me."

"Under the circumstances, that is not extraordinary."

Unorna stared at him rather angrily. He was jesting, of course, and she
had been dreaming, or had been so overwrought by excitement as to have
been made the victim of a vivid hallucination. Nevertheless there was
something disagreeable in the matter-of-fact gravity of his jest.

"I am tired of your kind of wit," she said.

"The kind of wit which is called wisdom is said to be fatiguing," he
retorted.

"I wish you would give me an opportunity of being wearied in that way."

"Begin by opening your eyes to facts, then. It is you who are trying
to jest. It is I who am in earnest. Did you, or did you not, offer your
soul for a certain piece of information? Did you, or did you not, hear
those dead things moan and cry? Did you, or did you not, see them move?"

"How absurd!" cried Unorna. "You might as well ask whether, when one
is giddy, the room is really going round? Is there any practical
difference, so far as sensation goes, between a mummy and a block of
wood?"

"That, my dear lady, is precisely what we do not know, and what we most
wish to know. Death is not the change which takes place at a moment
which is generally clearly defined, when the heart stops beating, and
the eye turns white, and the face changes colour. Death comes some time
after that, and we do not know exactly when. It varies very much in
different individuals. You can only define it as the total and final
cessation of perception and apperception, both functions depending on
the nerves. In ordinary cases Nature begins of herself to destroy the
nerves by a sure process. But how do you know what happens when decay
is not only arrested but prevented before it has begun? How can you
foretell what may happen when a skilful hand has restored the tissues of
the body to their original flexibility, or preserved them in the state
in which they were last sensitive?"

"Nothing can ever make me believe that a mummy can suddenly hear and
understand," said Unorna. "Much less that it can move and produce
a sound. I know that the idea has possessed you for many years, but
nothing will make me believe it possible."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing short of seeing and hearing."

"But you have seen and heard."

"I was dreaming."

"When you offered your soul?"

"Not then, perhaps. I was only mad then."

"And on the ground of temporary insanity you would repudiate the
bargain?"

Unorna