’You have heard this tale before?—­No doubt.  And often.  The traps are many, and the fools and the unwary are not a few.  The singularity of my experience is still to come.  You must forgive me if I seem to stumble in the telling.  I am anxious to present my case as baldly, and with as little appearance of exaggeration as possible.  I say with as little appearance, for some appearance of exaggeration I fear is unavoidable.  My case is so unique, and so out of the common run of our every-day experience, that the plainest possible statement must smack of the sensational.

’As, I fancy, you have guessed, when understanding returned to me, I found myself in an apartment with which I was unfamiliar.  I was lying, undressed, on a heap of rugs in a corner of a low-pitched room which was furnished in a fashion which, when I grasped the details, filled me with amazement.  By my side knelt the Woman of the Songs.  Leaning over, she wooed my mouth with kisses.  I cannot describe to you the sense of horror and of loathing with which the contact of her lips oppressed me.  There was about her something so unnatural, so inhuman, that I believe even then I could have destroyed her with as little sense of moral turpitude as if she had been some noxious insect.

’"Where am I?” I exclaimed.

’"You are with the children of Isis,” she replied.  What she meant I did not know, and do not to this hour.  “You are in the hands of the great goddess,—­of the mother of men.”

’"How did I come here?”

’"By the loving kindness of the great mother.”

’I do not, of course, pretend to give you the exact text of her words, but they were to that effect.

’Half raising myself on the heap of rugs, I gazed about me,—­and was astounded at what I saw.

’The place in which I was, though the reverse of lofty, was of considerable size,—­I could not conceive whereabouts it could be.  The walls and roof were of bare stone,—­as though the whole had been hewed out of the solid rock.  It seemed to be some sort of temple, and was redolent with the most extraordinary odour.  An altar stood about the centre, fashioned out of a single block of stone.  On it a fire burned with a faint blue flame,—­the fumes which rose from it were no doubt chiefly responsible for the prevailing perfumes.  Behind it was a huge bronze figure, more than life size.  It was in a sitting posture, and represented a woman.  Although it resembled no portrayal of her I have seen either before or since, I came afterwards to understand that it was meant for Isis.  On the idol’s brow was poised a beetle.  That the creature was alive seemed clear, for, as I looked at it, it opened and shut its wings.

’If the one on the forehead of the goddess was the only live beetle which the place contained, it was not the only representation.  It was modelled in the solid stone of the roof, and depicted in flaming colours on hangings which here and there were hung against the walls.  Wherever the eye turned it rested on a scarab.  The effect was bewildering.  It was as though one saw things through the distorted glamour of a nightmare.  I asked myself if I were not still dreaming; if my appearance of consciousness were not after all a mere delusion; if I had really regained my senses.