But, while it escaped description in his mind, as equally it eluded visualisation in his soul, he felt that it combined with its vastness something infinitely small as well.  Of such wee particles is the giant Desert born....

Henriot started nervously in his chair, convicted once more of unconscionable staring; and at the same moment a group of hotel people, returning from a dance, passed through the hall and nodded him good-night.  The scent of the women reached him; and with it the sound of their voices discussing personalities just left behind.  A London atmosphere came with them.  He caught trivial phrases, uttered in a drawling tone, and followed by the shrill laughter of a girl.  They passed upstairs, discussing their little things, like marionettes upon a tiny stage.

But their passage brought him back to things of modern life, and to some standard of familiar measurement.  The pictures that his soul had gazed at so deep within, he realised, were a pictorial transfer caught incompletely from this woman’s vivid mind.  He had seen the Desert as the grey, enormous Tomb where hovered still the Ka of ancient Egypt.  Sand screened her visage with the veil of centuries.  But She was there, and She was living.  Egypt herself had pitched a temporary camp in him, and then moved on.

There was a momentary break, a sense of abruptness and dislocation.  And then he became aware that Lady Statham had been speaking for some time before he caught her actual words, and that a certain change had come into her voice as also into her manner.

V

She was leaning closer to him, her face suddenly glowing and alive.  Through the stone figure coursed the fires of a passion that deepened the coal-black eyes and communicated a hint of light—­of exaltation—­to her whole person.  It was incredibly moving.  To this deep passion was due the power he had felt.  It was her entire life; she lived for it, she would die for it.  Her calmness of manner enhanced its effect.  Hence the strength of those first impressions that had stormed him.  The woman had belief; however wild and strange, it was sacred to her.  The secret of her influence was—­conviction.

His attitude shifted several points then.  The wonder in him passed over into awe.  The things she knew were real.  They were not merely imaginative speculations.

“I knew I was not wrong in thinking you in sympathy with this line of thought,” she was saying in lower voice, steady with earnestness, and as though she had read his mind.  “You, too, know, though perhaps you hardly realise that you know.  It lies so deep in you that you only get vague feelings of it—­intimations of memory.  Isn’t that the case?”

Henriot gave assent with his eyes; it was the truth.

“What we know instinctively,” she continued, “is simply what we are trying to remember.  Knowledge is memory.”  She paused a moment watching his face closely.  “At least, you are free from that cheap scepticism which labels these old beliefs as superstition.”  It was not even a question.