And—­he was caught.  The darkness melted from the city.  The fog whisked off into an azure sky.  The roar of traffic turned into booming of the sea.  There was a whistling among cordage, and the floor swayed to and fro.  He saw a sailor touch his cap and pocket the two-franc piece.  The syren hooted—­ominous sound that had started him on many a journey of adventure—­and the roar of London became mere insignificant clatter of a child’s toy carriages.

He loved that syren’s call; there was something deep and pitiless in it.  It drew the wanderers forth from cities everywhere:  “Leave your known world behind you, and come with me for better or for worse!  The anchor is up; it is too late to change.  Only—­beware!  You shall know curious things—­and alone!”

Henriot stirred uneasily in his chair.  He turned with sudden energy to the shelf of guide-books, maps and time-tables—­possessions he most valued in the whole room.  He was a happy-go-lucky, adventure-loving soul, careless of common standards, athirst ever for the new and strange.

“That’s the best of having a cheap flat,” he laughed, “and no ties in the world.  I can turn the key and disappear.  No one cares or knows—­no one but the thieving caretaker.  And he’s long ago found out that there’s nothing here worth taking!”

There followed then no lengthy indecision.  Preparation was even shorter still.  He was always ready for a move, and his sojourn in cities was but breathing-space while he gathered pennies for further wanderings.  An enormous kit-bag—­sack-shaped, very worn and dirty—­emerged speedily from the bottom of a cupboard in the wall.  It was of limitless capacity.  The key and padlock rattled in its depths.  Cigarette ashes covered everything while he stuffed it full of ancient, indescribable garments.  And his voice, singing of those “yellow bees in the ivy bloom,” mingled with the crying of the rising wind about his windows.  His restlessness had disappeared by magic.

This time, however, there could be no haunted Pelion, nor shady groves of Tempe, for he lived in sophisticated times when money markets regulated movement sternly.  Travelling was only for the rich; mere wanderers must pig it.  He remembered instead an opportune invitation to the Desert.  “Objective” invitation, his genial hosts had called it, knowing his hatred of convention.  And Helouan danced into letters of brilliance upon the inner map of his mind.  For Egypt had ever held his spirit in thrall, though as yet he had tried in vain to touch the great buried soul of her.  The excavators, the Egyptologists, the archaeologists most of all, plastered her grey ancient face with labels like hotel advertisements on travellers’ portmanteaux.  They told where she had come from last, but nothing of what she dreamed and thought and loved.  The heart of Egypt lay beneath the sand, and the trifling robbery of little details that poked forth from tombs and temples brought