"but once I knew a scarab like to that. It--hung round the
neck--of one I loved," and she gave a little sob, and I saw that after
all she was only a woman, although she might be a very old one.

"There," she went on, "it must be one like to it, and yet never did
I see one like to it, for thereto hung a history, and he who wore it
prized it much.[*] But the scarab that I knew was not set thus in the
bezel of a ring. Go now, Holly, go, and, if thou canst, try to forget
that thou hast of thy folly looked upon Ayesha's beauty," and, turning
from me, she flung herself on her couch, and buried her face in the
cushions.

[*] I am informed by a renowned and learned Egyptologist, to
whom I have submitted this very interesting and beautifully
finished scarab, "Suten se Ra," that he has never seen one
resembling it. Although it bears a title frequently given to
Egyptian royalty, he is of opinion that it is not
necessarily the cartouche of a Pharaoh, on which either the
throne or personal name of the monarch is generally
inscribed. What the history of this particular scarab may
have been we can now, unfortunately, never know, but I have
little doubt but that it played some part in the tragic
story of the Princess Amenartas and her lover Kallikrates,
the forsworn priest of Isis.--Editor.

As for me, I stumbled from her presence, and I do not remember how I
reached my own cave.

XIV

A SOUL IN HELL

It was nearly ten o'clock at night when I cast myself down upon my bed,
and began to gather my scattered wits, and reflect upon what I had seen
and heard. But the more I reflected the less I could make of it. Was I
mad, or drunk, or dreaming, or was I merely the victim of a gigantic
and most elaborate hoax? How was it possible that I, a rational man,
not unacquainted with the leading scientific facts of our history, and
hitherto an absolute and utter disbeliever in all the hocus-pocus which
in Europe goes by the name of the supernatural, could believe that I had
within the last few minutes been engaged in conversation with a woman
two thousand and odd years old? The thing was contrary to the experience
of human nature, and absolutely and utterly impossible. It must be a
hoax, and yet, if it were a hoax, what was I to make of it? What, too,
was to be said of the figures on the water, of the woman's extraordinary
acquaintance with the remote past, and her ignorance, or