st stroke? Do you think he was
buried with decency with his chisels beside him?"

"No! surely not! Otherwise, Moonflower, somebody would have dug him
out along with the Pharaohs, and priests, and courtesans, so that we
should have learned something about him by turning his mummified body
inside out, and unwinding the burial cloth from about those fingers
which have given us the Sphinx. Strange! that a woman's whim, born of
vanity, should be spoken of with bated breath, even to this day! A
woman melts a pearl and the world continues to cry Ah! through all
time; a man creates this, and no record is left of him. Verily Allah
has blessed me in giving you into my hands, for behold your thoughts
are as sweet to me as the wind that blows through the mimosa trees at
dawn."

The girl turned a serious face towards Hahmed and smiled sweetly.

"How small and futile we are, Hahmed, in front of this great thing.
See how it, I say it because surely there is no sex in any one part of
it, brushes us aside, not in indifference, but just because to it we
simply do not exist any more than the sand, even less so, because the
sand in time would even blind those eyes. How I wish I could see it
lying uncovered on its base. And I somehow can't imagine that Mary
laid the Infant Christ to rest between its paws! How did they cross
the desert on one poor ass? How would they, so humble and so poor, be
able to approach the Sphinx with its guards about it? And I wonder if
they will ever open up the shaft and search until they find the history
on the walls of the base which, I am sure, buries somebody down in its
depths.

"Eternity! and yet I fret and worry, get cross--_cross_, Hahmed, which
is so much more little than angry--and love to tease and give pain.
Forgive me!"

And something had crept into the girl's voice which caused the man to
lean forward, and very gently to tilt Jill's face upward so that the
moon struck down full upon it.

But the heavy lids veiled the eyes, so that nothing could be seen of
the wonder of all-time reflected therein. A wonder of the birth of
which there is no record; a mystery which has a million times million
shapes, each shape fashioned afresh, yet always the same; a mystery
besides which the Sphinx is as a grain of sand. The mystery of Love.

And Hahmed the Arab, who had waited since all eternity for this moment
of time, raised one hand to heaven and praised his God, and then leant
forward to read