It might well have lost
him the very assistance he seemed so anxious to obtain. Henriot could not fathom it quite. Only one thing was clear to him. He,
Henriot, was not the only one in danger. They talked for long after that--far into the night. The lights went
out, and the armed patrol, pacing to and fro outside the iron railings
that kept the desert back, eyed them curiously. But the only other thing
he gathered of importance was the ledge upon the cliff-top where he was
to stand and watch; that he was expected to reach there before sunset
and wait till the moon concealed all glimmer in the western sky,
and--that the woman, who had been engaged for days in secret preparation
of soul and body for the awful rite, would not be visible again until he
saw her in the depths of the black valley far below, busy with this man
upon audacious, ancient purposes. IX


An hour before sunset Henriot put his rugs and food upon a donkey, and
gave the boy directions where to meet him--a considerable distance from
the appointed spot. He went himself on foot. He slipped in the heat
along the sandy street, where strings of camels still go slouching,
shuffling with their loads from the quarries that built the pyramids,
and he felt that little friendly Helouan tried to keep him back. But
desire now was far too strong for caution. The desert tide was rising. It easily swept him down the long white street towards the enormous
deeps beyond. He felt the pull of a thousand miles before him; and twice
a thousand years drove at his back. Everything still basked in the sunshine. He passed Al Hayat, the stately
hotel that dominates the village like a palace built against the sky;
and in its pillared colonnades and terraces he saw the throngs of people
having late afternoon tea and listening to the music of a regimental
band. Men in flannels were playing tennis, parties were climbing off
donkeys after long excursions; there was laughter, talking, a babel of
many voices. The gaiety called to him; the everyday spirit whispered to
stay and join the crowd of lively human beings. Soon there would be
merry dinner-parties, dancing, voices of pretty women, sweet white
dresses, singing, and the rest. Soft eyes would question and turn dark. He picked out several girls he knew among the palms. But it was all
many, oh so many leagues away; centuries lay between him and this modern
world. An indescriable loneliness was in his heart. He went searching
through the sands of forgotten ages, and wandering among the ruins of a
vanished time. He hurried. Already the deeper water caught his breath. He climbed the steep rise towards the plateau where the Observatory
stands, and saw two of the officials whom he knew taking a siesta after
their long day's work. He felt that his mind, too, had dived and
searched among the heavenly bodies that live in silent, changeless peace
remote from the world of men. They recognised him, these two whose eyes
also knew tremendous distance close. They beckoned, waving the straws
through which they sipped their drinks from tall glasses. Their voices
floated down to him as from the star-fields. He saw the sun gleam upon
the glasses, and heard the clink of the ice against the sides. The
stillness was amazing. He waved an answer, and passed quickly on. He
could not stop this sliding current of the years. The tide moved faster, the draw of piled-up cycles urging it. He emerged
upon the plateau, and met the cooler Desert air. His feet went crunching
on the "desert-film" that spread its curious dark shiny carpet as far as
the eye could reach; it lay everywhere, unswept and smooth as when the
feet of vanished civilizations trod its burning surface, then dipped
behind the curtains Time pins against the stars. And here the body of
the tide set all one way. There was a greater strength of current,
draught and suction. He felt the powerful undertow. Deeper masses drew
his feet sideways, and he felt the rushing of the central body of the
sand. The sands were moving, from their foundation upwards. He went
unresistingly with them. Turning a moment, he looked back at shining little Helouan in the blaze
of evening light. The voices reached him very faintly, merged now in a
general murmur. Beyond lay the strip of Delta vivid green, the palms,
the roofs of Bedrashein, the blue laughter of the Nile with its flocks
of curved felucca sails. Further still, rising above the yellow Libyan
horizon, gloomed the vast triangles of a dozen Pyramids, cutting their
wedge-shaped clefts out of a sky fast crimsoning through a sea of gold. Seen thus, their dignity imposed upon the entire landscape. They towered
darkly, symbolic signatures of the ancient Powers that now watched him
taking these little steps across their damaged territory. He gazed a minute, then went on. He saw the big pale face of the moon in
the east. Above the ever-silent Thing these giant symbols once
interpreted, she rose, grand, effortless, half-terrible as themselves. And, with her, she lifted up this tide of the Desert that drew his feet
across the sand to Wadi Hof. A moment later he dipped below the ridge
that buried Helouan and Nile and Pyramids from sight. He entered the
ancient waters. Time then, in an instant, flowed back behind his
footsteps, obliterating every trace. And with it his mind went too. He
stepped across the gulf of centuries, moving into the Past. The Desert
lay before him--an open tomb wherein his soul should read presently of
things long vanished. The strange half-lights of sunset began to play their witchery then upon
the landscape. A purple glow came down upon the Mokattam Hills. Perspective danced its tricks of false, incredible deception. The
soaring kites that were a mile away seemed suddenly close, passing in a
moment from the size of gnats to birds with a fabulous stretch of wing. Ridges and cliffs rushed close without a hint of warning, and level
places sank into declivities and basins that made him trip and stumble. That indescribable quality of the Desert, which makes timid souls avoid
the hour of dusk, emerged; it spread everywhere, undisguised. And the
bewilderment it brings is no vain, imagined thing, for it distorts
vision utterly, and the effect upon the mind when familiar sight goes
floundering is the simplest way in the world of dragging the anchor that
grips reality. At the hour of sunset this bewilderment comes upon a man
with a disconcerting swiftness. It rose now with all this weird
rapidity. Henriot found himself enveloped at a moment's notice. But, knowing well its effect, he tried to judge it and pass on. The
other matters, the object of his journey chief of all, he refused to
dwell upon with any imagination. Wisely, his mind, while never losing
sight of it, declined to admit the exaggeration that over-elaborate
thinking brings. "I'm going to witness an incredible experiment in which
two enthusiastic religious dreamers believe firmly," he repeated to
himself. "I have agreed to draw--anything I see.