The great hour had arrived. Margaret and Michael were on their way to see the inside of the tomb, which had proved to be greater by far in importance and splendour than even the Arab soothsayer had predicted. It was, in fact, a tomb of unique interest, a tomb whose history was to baffle the most expert Egyptologists. Freddy had kept the wonder of it a secret from Mike and Margaret. He had told them practically nothing. He wished to give them a surprise.

It had been inspected and photographed and all the necessary formalities had been gone through, and now, after an admirably borne period of waiting, Michael and Margaret were to be allowed to visit it.

Freddy was to await their arrival on the actual site, either the tomb itself or outside it.

As Michael and Margaret hurried through the valley and climbed the hill, leading down into the side valley which held the tomb, they spoke very little to each other. Their hearts were full of an intense excitement. Freddy's silence had prepared them for something unusual.

The sun was blazing like a furnace in the valley; a hot wind was blowing from the Sahara. Meg and Michael were too excited to be conscious of their surroundings. Their feet took them mechanically to the scene of operations.

The tomb had been photographed before any modern had set foot in it.

Very hot and very excited, they at last arrived at its entrance, which was guarded by two important-looking Egyptian policemen in modern uniforms. Until Michael and Margaret had satisfactorily proved to them that they had come to assist Effendi Lampton and that they were members of his camp, they were not permitted to go near the aperture.

Their identity being established, they at last began their descent down the deep shaft into the tomb. The hot air which ascended in puffs from the depths below scorched their faces. Meg felt stifled. Still hotter air met them as they continued their descent.

One of the Arab workmen helped Meg by going on in front and making himself into a pillar for her to rest against when she lost her footing. Her feet slipped and stumbled in the soft debris, yet pluckily she always managed to reach the stately Arab. Each time she reached him, she would halt and take a little breath, and with renewed forces she would stumble on a few paces further. It was a very undignified proceeding and an exhausting one.

At last they reached the level of the tomb; they could safely raise their eyes. As they did so, Meg gave a sharp cry of surprise. Never in all the world had she imagined such a wonderful, wonderful sight. A glitter of gold and white and the gleam of precious stones and the brilliant hues of vivid enamels, caught her eyes. Freddy was holding an electric torch in one hand, while with the other he picked up as fast as he could from the ground the bits of carnelian and turquoise and blue lapis-lazuli which lay scattered at his feet. Margaret could see nothing clearly; after the darkness, things were all blurred. But she recognized the friendly cigarette-boxes; they were there, and Freddy was filling them as fast as his one hand would allow him. Thousands of mummy-beads powdered the floor with bright blue. The white walls showed a wealth of colour in their paintings.

Freddy was in his white flannels; his modern athletic figure seemed oddly incongruous. He looked up as they appeared.

"Hallo, Meg! Take care—stay where you are—don't move one step further."

He instantly stopped his work and came to their assistance.

"You can't walk too softly or be too careful. All these things are as brittle as burnt egg-shells—the slightest jar may shatter them to atoms." His voice was full of eager happiness.

"Oh, Freddy," Meg said. "It's too wonderful! I never imagined such a scene. You darling!" She hugged his arm.

"Wait a bit," Freddy said. "There's better things to come. I say,
Mike, keep your coat close to you—that's right. Now, step like cats."

All three became silent as they picked their way gingerly; their advance required a nicety and precision of step which permitted of no talking or examination of the scene which enthralled them.

At last they reached an inner chamber, the actual tomb itself. An exclamation of amazement burst from both Michael and Margaret simultaneously. It certainly was an extraordinary scene which met their gaze.

"Good heavens!" Mike said, while Meg caught hold of Freddy's arm. She was afraid lest their loud cry might shatter the vision before their eyes. Would it vanish with the coming of the light as the figure of Akhnaton had vanished two mornings before?

A queen, dressed as a bride, in all the magnificence of old Theban splendour, lay stretched at full length on the floor; her arms were folded across her breast, her face dignified by the repose of death, the repose of a Buddha, whose eyes have seen beyond.

This royal effigy was so magnificent, its colours were so untarnished, that light seemed to radiate from the still figure. Here the might of royalty had defied time.

Meg and Mike saw nothing but the bridal figure; they had eyes for it alone, its pathos, its dignity.

Freddy pointed to a coffin which lay near the queen. It was empty; one side of it had been smashed open. A brown and shrivelled mummy, a ghastly object, had fallen out. It lay quite close to the brilliant effigy. Surely this was the skeleton at the feast?

Meg shrank back. In the hot tomb a chill struck her heart. This poor brown object was the real queen. Here time had triumphed.

She looked again, while Freddy held the torch nearer. A vulture with outstretched wings, the ancient emblem of divine protection, cut out of flat gold, sat upon the forehead of the mummy. Its left claw had slipped into the empty eye-socket. A row of long white teeth gaped threateningly up to the roof. The lips had dried and withered until they had become as hard as brown leather. Alas for human vanity! Those lips had once been a lover's, those lips had once responded to human caresses and desires!

Meg's flesh shrank. It was horrible. It was wrong to pry upon this pitiful object which centuries had hidden from man's sight, this humiliation of royal power. Nothing could have illustrated more vividly the mockery and the futility of human greatness. The ghastly cheeks, covered with something which had once been human flesh, the menacing teeth, the embalmed skull, sickened Meg.

For relief she turned her eyes once more to the sublime effigy, to the waiting bride. Her chamber had been furnished with the lavish indulgence of an ardent bridegroom.

Michael was standing by Margaret's side. Her hand caught his; human contact was essential.

The coffin which had once held the mummy had rested on a beautiful wooden trestle, which had been covered with a golden canopy. The legs of the trestle had given way, probably with the weight of the coffin, for the wood had become as brittle and dry as fine egg-shell. With the fall the mummied body had rolled out and landed on the ground.

This, Freddy conjectured, was the explanation of the apparent desecration of the tomb.

After they had looked at all that Freddy could show them until more work had been accomplished, at the two figures which occupied the tomb, the one so abject and distressing the other so magnificent and romantic, and at the furniture which appeared to Meg to have been made only the day before, in spite of Freddy's warning that a breath of cold air would disperse it before their eyes, he told them that "time was up."

Meg's astonishment had increased with the examination of every object—the carved wooden armchair, which appeared to belong to the best Empire period; the exquisite wedding-chest, of lacquer, the blues and greens of its floral decorations still daringly brilliant and vivid—they were far brighter and more perfect than any decorations which a faker of antiquities would dare to perpetrate.

"But, surely," she said at last, when they had come to the end, "this furniture's just pure Empire? Look at it, Mike." She pointed to the exquisite armchair, an object too beautiful and rare for mere human forms to rest in; then she made him examine the couch. A portion of its fine cane seating had given way. Had a ghostly form sat on it? "I thought the French copied their Empire furniture from ancient Greek models?" she said.

"Well, if they did, here we have it in all its perfection," Freddy said. "In Egypt you'll find the originals of more than Empire furniture. The thing is, where did the Egyptians get their models from? None of the Louis's ever gave their Pompadours, nor Napoleon his Josephine, anything as beautiful as that." He pointed to the casket.

"And the very air which keeps us alive will destroy these," said Meg. "It's odd, the way which things that have existed intact for three thousand years without air will be killed by it!"

"Have you any definite ideas about that figure?" Mike referred to the mummy. "Whose is it?"

"The whole thing is very bewildering. The tomb obviously hasn't been plundered, for nothing of any value is missing, and yet, as you can see, some of the gold wrappings have been torn from the mummy, certain things have been defaced on the walls—the tomb is not as it was when the body was first laid here."

"No," Mike said. "Obviously not. The entrance has been tampered with and those outer walls built; and look at all that debris in the shaft. Yet, as you say, the obvious things of intrinsic value have not been removed."

Meg pointed to a recess in the wall; it still held the canopic jars. Their lids were splendidly formed out of head-portraits of the queen. Meg knew their meaning, their use; they held the intestines of the dead. The Biblical expression, "bowels of compassion," always came to her mind when she looked at canopic jars. These jars had their significance.

A very good significance, too, she thought, for certainly our bowels are highly sensitive organs, responding and acting in complete sympathy with our mental condition. And who can say for certain where our compassions are seated, our sensibilities and sympathies? Why not, as the Egyptians thought, in our bowels rather than in our brains? "Joseph's bowels did yearn upon his brother Benjamin."

"Then you have no idea who the queen was?" Meg said.

"Not yet," Freddy said. "But we shall know. No Egyptian could enter into his future abode without his name. It was always plainly and repeatedly written on the embalmed mummy. His identification was absolutely essential."

"What a help to Egyptologists!" Meg said.

"Probably her name will be written on these golden wrappings and on the scarabs, if we find any. Nothing has been done yet. This precaution of the ancients, in the matter of names, has, as you say, saved us endless work. If plunderers haven't obliterated the name and stolen the scarabs and other marks of identification, we generally discover who it is."

Meg sighed. "Is it just ordinary desert and daylight still up above,
Freddy? I can't believe it. We seem to be back in the Egypt of the
Pharaohs down here."

They all looked silently again at the wonderful sight, far more wonderful than words can suggest—the power of Egypt, the mystery of death.

"The soothsayer was quite true," Meg said. "His words were more than true."

"Yes," Freddy said, "more than true. And the odd thing is that he said what I thought was a lot of rot about a 'bridal figure,' its splendour, its brilliance. He visualized it almost correctly. He said, too, that there would be great trouble for us in the work; he saw difficulties and errors and wrong judgments. Nothing was clear, beyond the brilliance of the figure and the objects. I wonder if he will be right in that as well?"

Michael and Margaret looked at each other. Obviously Freddy had been influenced by the accuracy of the visionary's predictions. His voice was free from scoffing. He owned that it was extraordinary—the manner in which the man's words had come true. Neither Meg nor Michael made any remark; they held their tongues in patience.

"There is certainly plenty of gold," Freddy said, "and jewels and much fine apparel. I hope we shan't encounter the great difficulty he expects, as regards the historical problems and arguments it may open up. He predicts that the opinions of the learned Egyptologists will be cast out; their judgments will be at fault. What at first will appear obvious and clear will not be the lasting truth."

"How odd!" Mike said. "Was he very pleased to hear of the correctness of his predictions so far?"

"I haven't told him."

"Not told him?"

"No, it's wiser not. I've done my best to keep the astonishing richness of the tomb from the ears of the natives. No one has been inside it but the Chief Inspector and the photographer and you two. No words have been spoken—you must not talk."

Meg's heart bounded. It was delightful to be one of the privileged few, to be trusted and accepted as one of the school. She felt like a great explorer who had set foot in untravelled country.

"If we stand here, without moving," she said; "quite, quite still, mayn't we stay for a little bit longer? I'm so full of wonder and amazement, Freddy. I can't begin to think intelligently or see things separately—everything is a blurred mass of white and gold and blue and priceless objects."

"No, Meg, I'm sorry—I can't let you stay. You see, I must take this light with me and get on with picking up those small objects. You'll see all of them to-night. And with out the light you would be in total darkness—real Egyptian darkness."

"That's the thing that beats me. Freddy, how do you solve the problem?—had they electric torches, or were these tombs only built for supernatural eyes to enjoy?"

"They certainly didn't use flares or torches in tombs, as the early Christians did in the Roman catacombs, for there's no trace on the walls of dirt or smoke as there is on the low walls of the catacombs. There is absolutely nothing to tell us how they lighted these vast buildings up, how they even introduced sufficient light to paint them by or to build them. Look at the minuteness of these figures."

"Surely they never built all these wonderful tombs and took the trouble to paint them with the brightest colours if they were never again to be seen with mortal eyes? I can't believe it."

"So far we don't know. Perhaps the Ka, the part of a man who lived for ever in his eternal home, had supernatural powers of sight. The joys were for him. But how did they paint them in the darkness?"

"Is that fact ever alluded to?"

"No, the Ka is treated in a perfectly human and natural manner. All his pleasures were material ones. It's very odd—but we'll discover the secret yet."

"If they had some secret form of wireless telegraphy, they may just as well have had some secret means of producing light, don't you think? You've not discovered their wireless code, yet, have you?"

"No, that's still a secret. And they certainly used no apparatus for electric light, if they knew of it. There are no wires in the tombs." He laughed. "You know, there is a lift in the Forum at Rome; it was used for bringing the beasts up to the arena from underground cages. It is in use to-day, I believe."

"We've not discovered one hundredth part of what they had or hadn't,"
Meg said. "They probably used radium to cure diseases."

"The Etruscans had dentists who knew the use of gold for stopping teeth—we know that."

"Yes, I've seen a skull with gold-stopped teeth in the Etruscan Museum at Rome."

They had reached the beginning of the steep climb which was to take them up to the open desert. Freddy left them with the assurance that he would come back to lunch. The two policemen were to be responsible for the guarding of the tomb. If anything was disturbed, they would be held to account.

When Margaret and Michael at last reached the open desert, Meg flung herself down and gazed up into the sky. It had never seemed so blue and beautiful before. The clear air rushed into her lungs. Oh, the sweetness and the dearness of the daylight and the real world! The joy it was to press her body close, close to the desert! She put her face down to it. Nothing in all her life had ever been so reassuring and comforting.

Michael was seated beside her. The world was so wide and open and bewildering; he felt giddy, stupefied. Surrounding them was the ever-wonderful light of the desert, the yellow sands and, in the distance, the masses of moving figures, working like busy insects at the clearing away of the tomb-rubbish. Native chants and the noise of picks and spades shovelling up the debris broke the stillness. Life was just as it had been for the last two months. The desert was as it had been before the tribes of Israel followed Moses. Down below them, under the golden sand, in the dark bowels of the earth, Freddy was still picking up precious jewels and packing them into the cigarette-boxes, the effigy of the royal bride still lay in all her Pharaonic splendour. She was there, underneath them, waiting and waiting as she had waited for three thousand years for her heavenly bridegroom. And still by her side lay that shrivelled, withered corpse, the real queen, for whose pride and honour the vast underground temple had been built. The brown mummy was the thing which mattered, the real owner of the costly home.

Freddy, in his white flannels, with his modern mind, was alone with these two forms, alone and shut off from the embracing, loving light of the desert. It was not a quarter of an hour since Meg and he had been there; now they were as far away from the withered mummy and the resplendent bride as though they had travelled across the breadth of the world.

His mind went back to the time before the excavating of the tomb was begun, when it had seemed absurd to suppose that all this splendour lay under their feet. It seemed to him now as though the whole of Egypt might be honeycombed in this subterranean manner.

Meg still lay embracing the sun-warmed sand, rejoicing in the dazzling sunshine.

"It makes one feel very humble," she said at last. "So utterly, utterly unimportant. It doesn't seem as if it much matters what happens, not even to our love, Mike."

Mike raised his face from his hands. "I know," he said. "It is absolute devastation, nothing more or less. I'm shattered, Meg."

"It seems hardly worth while trying to do anything. Tomorrow we'll be like that. It's so difficult to explain, except that it's just wiped out my eagerness, it's made our own precious happiness seem absurd and hollow, human beings ridiculous."

"Dearest, I understand, I feel the same," Mike said. "All that down there"—he stuck his stick into the sand—"illustrates a bit too plainly the things we want to forget."

"It shows us the absurdity of what we think are the things that matter.
It's really destructive to anything like worldly fame and ambition.
Those poor shrunken cheeks, those poor leathery lips, those poor, poor
diadems and jewels!"

Mike let her ramble on. It was good for her to give utterance to her incoherent thoughts.

"They are so different when you see them in a museum," she said.
"They're impersonal there. They don't hurt one's self-importance."

"In Cairo they belong to a number and a glass case," Mike said. "They lose their individuality."

"Here they are a part of Egypt, that ancient, undying Egypt! You and I, like those dogs, Mike, won't have even bones to record us after three thousand years. Our bowels of tenderness will not lie intact in alabaster jars! Oh, Mike, take me in your arms! I want humanity, I want the things of to-day, I want all which that mummy has ridiculed! I hated it, Mike! I love life and your love! I want to forget that we are here to-day and gone to-morrow, mere human gnats."

Mike held her close to his heart. Meg could hear it beating. Oh, beloved humanity! Oh, dear human flesh and blood!

"That's lovely, Mike—that's you and me! That's our certain human love, our happiness! It is worth while, and it's not going to be like the running out of an hour-glass while an egg is boiling! It's going to last for ages and ages, isn't it? Say it is, Mike!"

"Yes, beloved." Mike kissed her hands.

She drew them away. "Don't kiss them, Mike. I feel as if they will be dried skeletons by to-morrow, and as if your lips, dearest, will have shrunk and shrunk right back until your teeth gape out of your hideous brown skull up to the blue above. Do you wonder that Akhnaton prayed so ardently that his spirit might come out and see the sun?"

Meg's head was buried in her hands. She was visualizing again the wonderful scene, which had taught her the mockery of all things which had formerly appeared so precious and important. It seemed to her at the moment that to sit down in the desert under the blue sky, and there wait for death, was the only thing to do. Nothing really mattered. Eternity enthralled her. Her happiness with Mike was but the swift hurrying of a white cloud across a summer sky, the work of the Exploration School a mere illustration of worldly vanity. In the great chaos which possessed her soul there was no light to comfort her. In looking into the past she had unexpectedly seen into the future. She had beheld the scorn and callousness of eternity.

Oddly enough, it was Michael who helped her to pull herself together and turn her thoughts to practical things, to the needs of the day. His more mystical nature, his familiarity with the mythology of Egypt and other occult subjects, had in a measure prepared his mind for the things which had burst suddenly upon Meg's practical nature. He had been subconsciously prepared for the tomb to be one of unusual importance. The soothsayer's prediction had not been mere charlatanry to him. His secret thoughts were so constantly focussed on what is termed the superhuman, that Meg's wonder and horror formed only a minor part of his emotions.

A thousand thoughts had flashed through his mind when he first saw the amazing display of jewels and faience and gold, the resplendent queen, whose royal magnificence had mocked at time. The inexhaustible wealth of buried Egypt forced before his eyes the treasure of gold of which Akhnaton had spoken, that imperial wealth which he had buried behind the hills of his fair capital. He felt convinced that it was there; he felt convinced that his friend in el-Azhar had seen it, just as the Arab soothsayer had seen the royal effigy dressed as a bride.

Mike had little conversation even for Meg. His mind was harassed and absorbed. The fresh impetus which he had received was pounding like a sledge-hammer at his natural and supernatural forces. His natural self was the devil's advocate, and a very able one. It argued against the super-instincts which led him to the treasure. It made him practical. It made him, as Freddy would have declared, "sanely critical of the insane." It admitted the apparent folly of the thing into which he was drifting.

He pulled Meg up from her seat on the sand. He realized that her domestic duties were what her nerves needed; they had lately been greatly taxed, first by her vision of Akhnaton and now by the excitement of their entry into the tomb.[1]

A lover's kisses and strong human arms had done much for Meg. She had a horror of hysterical females. She pulled herself together and determined to be practical. Only a few moments before she had felt an almost uncontrollable desire to burst into tears. How thankful she was that Mike had saved her from the humiliation!

But how in the world was she going to bring herself back to the paltry things of every day? How was she ever again going to feel that life was real and actual?

She entered the hut with unwilling feet and troubled mind; for some unaccountable reason its atmosphere depressed her; she wished to avoid it—she felt a curious apprehension of bad news or of coming evil. At the same time, practical work would be beneficial.

As they came in together, Mohammed Ali greeted Michael with the news that "One lady and one gentleman has come, very long time they wait. Lady she stays inside, gentleman he go up the valley."

Instantly life was real again, and Meg a living, angry woman. "She" who stayed inside could only mean Mrs. Mervill. The tomb was forgotten, as was the royal bride. They belonged to the past; the present was all-engrossing.

The present hour was the living reality and Michael, her lover, and her own love were the things that mattered, the woman in the hut the one brilliant vision. Life was vital, urgent. A gnat's life would be long enough if it was to be passed with the woman whom she knew, in the coming struggle, would fight with tools which she, Meg, would not dare or deign to touch. As vivid as her vision of the tomb was her memory of Millicent Mervill's beauty. She could see it illuminating their desert hut; she could feel it eclipsing her own less vivid colouring as the sun had eclipsed the rays of Akhnaton.

Mike looked at her. Meg's cheeks were pale, her eyes deeply shadowed.
He hated the woman inside the tent. What had she come for?

A silent kiss separated them. With the kiss Meg's heart took courage.
It left no room for fear.

[1] The description of the interior of this tomb is taken from various reliable accounts of the interior of the tomb of Thiy. As Queen Thiy was the mother of Akhnaton, her tomb must have been discovered before the events described in this story, otherwise they could not have known that Akhnaton's mummy had been found in his mother's tomb.

When the tomb was first examined, the mummy which had fallen out of the coffin was supposed to be that of Queen Thiy. The light of after-events and of scientific research have proved that the mummy was that of a young man of about twenty-five years of age. The conclusion is that Akhnaton's body was brought from his original burying-place near his "City of the Horizon," and placed in his mother's tomb in the Western Hills.

The name of Akhnaton had been erased from the coffin, but it was still readable on the gold ribbons which encircled the body.