A land under
that Northern star, whence blew the sweet winds that cooled the
feverish desert air. A land of wholesome greenery, far, far away. Where were no scheming and malignant priesthood; whose ideas were to
lead to power through gloomy temples and more gloomy caverns of the
dead, through an endless ritual of death! A land where love was not
base, but a divine possession of the soul! Where there might be some
one kindred spirit which could speak to hers through mortal lips like
her own; whose being could merge with hers in a sweet communion of soul
to soul, even as their breaths could mingle in the ambient air! I know
the feeling, for I have shared it myself. I may speak of it now, since
the blessing has come into my own life. I may speak of it since it
enables me to interpret the feelings, the very longing soul, of that
sweet and lovely Queen, so different from her surroundings, so high
above her time! Whose nature, put into a word, could control the forces
of the Under World; and the name of whose aspiration, though but graven
on a star-lit jewel, could command all the powers in the Pantheon of
the High Gods. “And in the realisation of that dream she will surely be content to
rest!”

We men sat silent, as the young girl gave her powerful interpretation
of the design or purpose of the woman of old. Her every word and tone
carried with it the conviction of her own belief. The loftiness of her
thoughts seemed to uplift us all as we listened. Her noble words,
flowing in musical cadence and vibrant with internal force, seemed to
issue from some great instrument of elemental power. Even her tone was
new to us all; so that we listened as to some new and strange being
from a new and strange world. Her father’s face was full of delight. I knew now its cause. I understood the happiness that had come into
his life, on his return to the world that he knew, from that prolonged
sojourn in the world of dreams. To find in his daughter, whose nature
he had never till now known, such a wealth of affection, such a
splendour of spiritual insight, such a scholarly imagination, such... The rest of his feeling was of hope! The two other men were silent unconsciously. One man had had his
dreaming; for the other, his dreams were to come. For myself, I was like one in a trance. Who was this new, radiant
being who had won to existence out of the mist and darkness of our
fears? Love has divine possibilities for the lover’s heart! The wings
of the soul may expand at any time from the shoulders of the loved one,
who then may sweep into angel form. I knew that in my Margaret’s
nature were divine possibilities of many kinds. When under the shade
of the overhanging willow-tree on the river, I had gazed into the
depths of her beautiful eyes, I had thenceforth a strict belief in the
manifold beauties and excellences of her nature; but this soaring and
understanding spirit was, indeed, a revelation. My pride, like her
father’s, was outside myself; my joy and rapture were complete and
supreme! When we had all got back to earth again in our various ways, Mr.
Trelawny, holding his daughter’s hand in his, went on with his
discourse:

“Now, as to the time at which Queen Tera intended her resurrection to
take place! We are in contact with some of the higher astronomical
calculations in connection with true orientation. As you know, the
stars shift their relative positions in the heavens; but though the
real distances traversed are beyond all ordinary comprehension, the
effects as we see them are small. Nevertheless, they are susceptible
of measurement, not by years, indeed, but by centuries. It was by this
means that Sir John Herschel arrived at the date of the building of the
Great Pyramid—a date fixed by the time necessary to change the star of
the true north from Draconis to the Pole Star, and since then verified
by later discoveries. From the above there can be no doubt whatever
that astronomy was an exact science with the Egyptians at least a
thousand years before the time of Queen Tera. Now, the stars that go
to make up a constellation change in process of time their relative
positions, and the Plough is a notable example. The changes in the
position of stars in even forty centuries is so small as to be hardly
noticeable by an eye not trained to minute observances, but they can be
measured and verified. Did you, or any of you, notice how exactly the
stars in the Ruby correspond to the position of the stars in the
Plough; or how the same holds with regard to the translucent places in
the Magic Coffer?”

We all assented. He went on:

“You are quite correct. They correspond exactly. And yet when Queen
Tera was laid in her tomb, neither the stars in the Jewel nor the
translucent places in the Coffer corresponded to the position of the
stars in the Constellation as they then were!”

We looked at each other as he paused:  a new light was breaking upon
us. With a ring of mastery in his voice he went on:

“Do you not see the meaning of this? Does it not throw a light on the
intention of the Queen? She, who was guided by augury, and magic, and
superstition, naturally chose a time for her resurrection which seemed
to have been pointed out by the High Gods themselves, who had sent
their message on a thunderbolt from other worlds. When such a time was
fixed by supernal wisdom, would it not be the height of human wisdom to
avail itself of it? Thus it is”—here his voice deepened and trembled
with the intensity of his feeling—“that to us and our time is given
the opportunity of this wondrous peep into the old world, such as has
been the privilege of none other of our time; which may never be again. “From first to last the cryptic writing and symbolism of that wondrous
tomb of that wondrous woman is full of guiding light; and the key of
the many mysteries lies in that most wondrous Jewel which she held in
her dead hand over the dead heart, which she hoped and believed would
beat again in a newer and nobler world! “There are only loose ends now to consider. Margaret has given us the
true inwardness of the feeling of the other Queen!”  He looked at her
fondly, and stroked her hand as he said it. “For my own part I
sincerely hope she is right; for in such case it will be a joy, I am
sure, to all of us to assist at such a realisation of hope. But we
must not go too fast, or believe too much in our present state of
knowledge. The voice that we hearken for comes out of times strangely
other than our own; when human life counted for little, and when the
morality of the time made little account of the removing of obstacles
in the way to achievement of  desire. We must keep our eyes fixed on
the scientific side, and wait for the developments on the psychic side. “Now, as to this stone box, which we call the Magic Coffer. As I have
said, I am convinced that it opens only in obedience to some principle
of light, or the exercise of some of its forces at present unknown to
us.