A pause followed, that was succeeded by a sudden outburst of song wherein all the audience took part.  It was a very sonorous and beautiful song or hymn in some language which I did not understand, divided into four verses, the end of each verse being marked by the bowing of every one of those many singers towards the east, towards the west, and finally towards the altar.

Another pause till suddenly the doors of the sanctuary were thrown wide and from between them issued—­the goddess Isis of the Egyptians as I have seen her in pictures!  She was wrapped in closely clinging draperies of material so thin that the whiteness of her body could be seen beneath.  Her hair was outspread before her, and she wore a head-dress or bonnet of glittering feathers from the front of which rose a little golden snake.  In her arms she bore what at that distance seemed to be a naked child.  With her came two women, walking a little behind her and supporting her arms, who also wore feather bonnets but without the golden snake, and were clad in tight-fitting, transparent garments.

“My God!” whispered Ragnall, “it is my wife!”

“Then be silent and thank Him that she is alive and well,” I answered.

The goddess Isis, or the English lady—­in that excitement I did not reck which—­stood still while the priests and priestesses and all the audience, who, gathered on the upper benches of the amphitheatre, could see her above the wall of the inner court, raised a thrice-repeated and triumphant cry of welcome.  Then Harut and the first priestess lifted respectively an ear of corn and a flower from the two topmost platters and held these first to the lips of the child in her arms and secondly to her lips.

This ceremony concluded, the two attendant women led her round the altar to the stone chair, upon which she seated herself.  Next fire was kindled in the bowl on the tripod in front of the chair, how I could not see; but perhaps it was already smouldering there.  At any rate it burnt up in a thin blue flame, on to which Harut and the head priestess threw something that caused the flame to turn to smoke.  Then Isis, for I prefer to call her so while describing this ceremony, was caused to bend her head forward, so that it was enveloped in the smoke exactly as she and I had done some years before in the drawing-room at Ragnall Castle.  Presently the smoke died away and the two attendants with the feathered head-dresses straightened her in the chair where she sat still holding the babe against her breast as she might have done to nurse it, but with her head bent forward like that of a person in a swoon.

Now Harut stepped forward and appeared to speak to the goddess at some length, then fell back again and waited, till in the midst of an intense silence she rose from her seat and, fixing her wide eyes on the heavens, spoke in her turn, for although we heard nothing of what she said, in that clear, morning light we could see her lips moving.  For some minutes she spoke, then sat down again upon the chair and remained motionless, staring straight in front of her.  Harut advanced again, this time to the front of the altar, and, taking his stand upon a kind of stone step, addressed the priests and priestesses and all the encircling audience in a voice so loud and clear that I could distinguish and understand every word he said.