He had tried feebly to prefigure this face, but never had his visioning approached the actual in its majestic, still beauty.  The brow was nobly broad, the nose straight and purposeful, the chin bold yet delicate.  The grimness of the mouth was relieved by a faint lift of the upper lip, perhaps an echo of the smile with which he greeted death.  There was a gleam of teeth from under the lip.  The eyes had closed peacefully; the lids lay light upon their secrets as if they might flutter and open again.  On cheek and chin was a discernible growth of dark beard; the hair above the brow was black and abundant.  It was a kingly face, a face of command, though benign.  It was all too easy to believe that a crown had become it well.  And there had been no weakening at the end, no sunken cheeks nor hollowed temples.  The lines were full.  The general colour was of rich red mahogany.

He ran a tremulous hand over the face, smoothed the thick hair, fingered the firm lips that almost smiled.  Under the swathing of linen he could see where the hands were folded on the breast.  Low down on the right jaw was unmistakably a mole, a thing that had strangely survived on Bean’s own face.  Again he ran a hand over the features, then a corroborating hand over his own.  Intently and long he studied each detail, nostrils, eyebrows, ears, hair, the tips of the just-revealed teeth.

“God!” he breathed.  It was hardly more than a whisper and was uttered in all reverence.

Then—­

“God! how I’ve changed!”

VIII

On the following afternoon, among the Sunday throng in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a slender young man of inconsiderable stature, alert as to movement, but with an expression of absent dreaming, might have been observed giving special attention to the articles in those rooms devoted to ancient Egypt.  Doubtless, however, no one did observe him more than casually, for, though of singularly erect carriage, he was garbed inconspicuously in neutral tints, and his behaviour was never such as to divert attention from the surrounding spoils of the archaeologist.

Had his mind been as an open book, he would surely have become a figure of interest.  His mental attitude was that of a professional beau of acknowledged preeminence; he was comparing the self at home in the mummy case with the remnants of defunct Pharaohs here exposed under glass, and he was sniffing, in spirit, at their lack of kingly dignity and their inferior state of preservation.  Their wooden cases were often marred, faded, and broken.  Their shrouding linen was frayed and stained.  Their features were unimpressive and, in too many instances, shockingly incomplete.  They looked very little like kings, and the laudatory recitals of their one-time greatness, translated for the contemporary eye, seemed to be only the vapourings of third-class pugilists.