no true revelation of her stupendous spiritual splendour.  Henriot, in his youth, had searched and dived among what material he could find, believing once—­or half believing—­that the ceremonial of that ancient system veiled a weight of symbol that was reflected from genuine supersensual knowledge.  The rituals, now taken literally, and so pityingly explained away, had once been genuine pathways of approach.  But never yet, and least of all in his previous visits to Egypt itself, had he discovered one single person, worthy of speech, who caught at his idea.  “Curious,” they said, then turned away—­to go on digging in the sand.  Sand smothered her world to-day.  Excavators discovered skeletons.  Museums everywhere stored them—­grinning, literal relics that told nothing.

But now, while he packed and sang, these hopes of enthusiastic younger days stirred again—­because the emotion that gave them birth was real and true in him.  Through the morning mists upon the Nile an old pyramid bowed hugely at him across London roofs:  “Come,” he heard its awful whisper beneath the ceiling, “I have things to show you, and to tell.”  He saw the flock of them sailing the Desert like weird grey solemn ships that make no earthly port.  And he imagined them as one:  multiple expressions of some single unearthly portent they adumbrated in mighty form—­dead symbols of some spiritual conception long vanished from the world.

“I mustn’t dream like this,” he laughed, “or I shall get absent-minded and pack fire-tongs instead of boots.  It looks like a jumble sale already!” And he stood on a heap of things to wedge them down still tighter.

But the pictures would not cease.  He saw the kites circling high in the blue air.  A couple of white vultures flapped lazily away over shining miles.  Felucca sails, like giant wings emerging from the ground, curved towards him from the Nile.  The palm-trees dropped long shadows over Memphis.  He felt the delicious, drenching heat, and the Khamasin, that over-wind from Nubia, brushed his very cheeks.  In the little gardens the mish-mish was in bloom....  He smelt the Desert ... grey sepulchre of cancelled cycles....  The stillness of her interminable reaches dropped down upon old London....

The magic of the sand stole round him in its silent-footed tempest.

And while he struggled with that strange, capacious sack, the piles of clothing ran into shapes of gleaming Bedouin faces; London garments settled down with the mournful sound of camels’ feet, half dropping wind, half water flowing underground—­sound that old Time has brought over into modern life and left a moment for our wonder and perhaps our tears.

He rose at length with the excitement of some deep enchantment in his eyes.  The thought of Egypt plunged ever so deeply into him, carrying him into depths where he found it difficult to breathe, so strangely far away it seemed, yet indefinably familiar.  He lost his way.  A touch of fear came with it.