“Ah! it is thou!” she said.  “I mind me—­thou hast saved me from that horror-haunted place!” And she threw her arms about my neck, drew me to her and kissed me.  “Come, love,” she said, “let us be going!  I am sore athirst, and—­ah! so very weary!  The gems, too, chafe my breast!  Never was wealth so hardly won!  Come, let us be going from the shadow of this ghostly spot!  See the faint lights glancing from the wings of Dawn.  How beautiful they are, and how sweet to behold!  Never, in those Halls of Eternal Night, did I think to look upon the blush of dawn again!  Ah!  I can still see the face of that dead slave, with the Horror hanging to his beardless chin!  Bethink thee!—­there he’ll sit for ever—­there—­with the Horror!  Come; where may we find water?  I would give an emerald for a cup of water!”

“At the canal on the borders of the tilled land below the Temple of Horemkhu—­it is close by,” I answered.  “If any see us, we will say that we are pilgrims who have lost our way at night among the tombs.  Veil thyself closely, therefore, Cleopatra; and beware lest thou dost show aught of those gems about thee.”

So she veiled herself, and I lifted her on to the ass which was tethered near at hand.  We walked slowly through the plain till we came to the place where the symbol of the God Horemkhu,[*] fashioned as a mighty Sphinx (whom the Greeks call Harmachis), and crowned with the royal crown of Egypt, looks out in majesty across the land, his eyes ever fixed upon the East.  As we walked the first arrow of the rising sun quivered through the grey air, striking upon Horemkhu’s lips of holy calm, and the Dawn kissed her greeting to the God of Dawn.  Then the light gathered and grew upon the gleaming sides of twenty pyramids, and, like a promise from Life to Death, rested on the portals of ten thousand tombs.  It poured in a flood of gold across the desert sand—­it pierced the heavy sky of night, and fell in bright beams upon the green of fields and the tufted crest of palms.  Then from his horizon bed royal Ra rose up in pomp and it was day.

     [*] That is, “Horus on the horizon”; and signifies the power
     of Light and Good overcoming the power of Darkness and Evil
     incarnate in his enemy, Typhon.—­Editor.

Passing the temple of granite and of alabaster that was built before the days of Khufu, to the glory of the Majesty of Horemkhu, we descended the slope, and came to the banks of the canal.  There we drank; and that draught of muddy water was sweeter than all the choicest wine of Alexandria.  Also we washed the mummy dust and grime from our hands and brows and made us clean.  As she bathed her neck, stooping over the water, one of the great emeralds slipped from Cleopatra’s breast and fell into the canal, and it was but by chance that at length I found it in the mire.  Then, once more, I lifted Cleopatra onto the beast, and slowly, for I was very weary, we marched back to the banks of Sihor, where our craft