“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 readjust the veil before the woman’s face.

“The Sphinx shall not see your face, neither shall the stars, nor shall the wind touch your mouth, O! my beloved!  For I would take you to the ruins of the Temple of Khafra, where the rose colour of the stone shall tint your face and your hands, where eyes shall not see nor hear the story of the love I have to tell you.”

And leaning across he put his arm about Jill and lifted her from her saddle, and laid her across his knees with her head in the hollow of his shoulder.