The guardian of the temple, who had followed them softly, now lit a ribbon of magnesium, and there sprang into a vague and momentary life reliefs of the King performing ceremonies and accomplishing sacrifices.  Then the darkness closed again.  And the fragmentary and short vision seemed to Mrs. Armine like the vision of her little life as a beautiful woman, and the coming of the darkness to blot it out like the coming of the darkness of death to cover her for ever with its impenetrable mantle.

What she had told Meyer Isaacson in his consulting-room was true.  When she thought sincerely, she believed in no future life.  She could not conceive of a spirit life.  Nor could she conceive of the skeletons of the dead in some strange resurrection being reclothed with the flesh which she adored, being inhabited again by the vitality which makes skeleton and flesh living man or woman.  This life was all to her.  And when the light in which it existed and was perceived died away and was consumed, she believed that the vision could never reappear.

Now, in this once so sacred place, she seemed for a moment to plunge into the depths of herself, to penetrate into the inmost recesses of her nature.  In London, before Nigel came into her life, had she not been like Hathor in her temple, hearing the sound of the departing feet of those who had been her worshippers?  And with Nigel had come a wild hope of worldly eminence, of great riches, of a triumph over enemies.  And that hope had faded abruptly.  Yet through her association with Nigel she had come to another hope.  And this hope must be fulfilled, before the inevitable darkness that would fall about her beauty.  Nigel would never be the means to the end she had originally had in view.  Yet his destiny was to serve her.  He had his destiny, and she hers.  And hers was not a great worldly position, or any ultimate respectability.  She could not have the first, and so she would not have the second.  Perhaps she was born for other things—­born to be a votary of Venus, but not to content any man as his lawful wife.  The very word “lawful” sent a chill through her blood now.  She was meant for lawlessness, it seemed.  Then she would fulfil her destiny, without pity, without fear, but not without discretion.  And her destiny was to emerge from the trap in which she was confined.  So she believed.

Yet would she emerge?  In the darkness of Hathor’s sanctuary, haunted by the face of the goddess and by the sad thoughts of deserted womanhood which it suggested to her self-centred mind, she resolved that she would emerge, that nothing should stop her, that she would crush down any weakening sentiments and thoughts if they came to heart or mind.  Egypt, in which one desire had been rendered useless and finally killed in her, had given to her another, had brought to her a last chance—­she seemed to know it was that—­of happiness, of ugly yet intense joy.  In Egypt she had blossomed, fading woman