And as she sat, so still, her thoughts turned to the man who had said he loved her and who yet seemed so content to leave her quite alone.

A woman may refuse a man’s honest proposal of marriage and have no intention whatever of marrying him, even later on, but that does not mean he need necessarily take her at her word to the extent of retiring altogether from the horizon of her life.

As for the rest, the flowers upon her breakfast-table, her rides at dawn—­about that she instinctively kept her thoughts in check.  It was like the cut-glass bottle of perfume which you are not allowed to use, on account of your youth; the first few lines of the first novel you filched from your mother’s book-stand that afternoon she was out; the first time you put on a real evening dress and wound a fichu about your neck before you opened your bedroom door.

And as she sat there fell a little sound.

Bits of masonry as big as a bowl or as small as a marble are quite likely to fall upon your pate in colossal ruins, but, remembering the vague uneasiness which had caused her to stop and listen, further back, she sat forward and switched on her light.

Against the wall opposite her, entirely robed in black, with a glittering jewel clasping a corner of the great black mantle swinging from the shoulders, there stood a man.

There was no sign of the paralysing terror which swept the girl; her face, which had gone dead-white, was in shadow, her hands under control.

For a moment she sat breathless, then flashed the light full into the face of the man who had stalked her through the temple, then flashed it back to the jewel, then sighed—­an unutterable sigh of relief.

The jewel was in the shape of a hawk, the symbol of Ancient Egypt.

Just for a moment they stayed in utter silence, those two who for all we know may have met and parted in this very spot in the days of the XII dynasty, to meet and part and meet again.

Then she tackled the untoward situation in the only possible way.

“Will you, as you promised, if the hour is come, tell me the tale of the Hawk of Egypt?”

She spoke sweetly, softly, switching out the light.

And Hugh Carden Ali crossed the intervening square of sand, which, however, being one-half his heritage, stretched an impregnable barrier between them, and sank to the ground beside her.

The perfume of her raiment was about him, the sound of her breathing in his ears; all the love and worship of his heart was hers.  Yet he merely lifted the hem of her cloak to his lips.

The shadows pressed down upon them as he spoke, quietly, his voice echoing strangely in the Temple of the Gods.

“Behold, the Hawk of Egypt looked forth from the shadows of the mountain fastness, and nothing stirred in the earth or upon the face of the waters.

“Wrong had been wrought and the anger of the gods was as clouds loosened from their hands.