A fragment of old Egypt had returned--a little portion of
that vast Body of Belief that once was Egypt. Evoked by the worship of
one human heart, passionately sincere, the Ka of Egypt stepped back to
visit the material it once informed--the Sand. Yet only a portion came. Henriot clearly realised that. It stretched
forth an arm. Finding no mass of worshippers through whom it might
express itself completely, it pressed inanimate matter thus into its
service. Here was the beginning the woman had spoken of--little opening clue. Entire reconstruction lay perhaps beyond. And Henriot next realised that these Magnitudes in which this
group-energy sought to clothe itself as visible form, were curiously
familiar. It was not a new thing that he would see. Booming softly as
they dropped downwards through the sky, with a motion the size of them
rendered delusive, they trooped up the Avenue towards the central point
that summoned them. He realised the giant flock of them--descent of
fearful beauty--outlining a type of life denied to the world for ages,
countless as this sand that blew against his skin. Careering over the
waste of Desert moved the army of dark Splendours, that dwarfed any
organic structure called a body men have ever known. He recognised them,
cold in him of death, though the outlines reared higher than the
pyramids, and towered up to hide whole groups of stars. Yes, he
recognised them in their partial revelation, though he never saw the
monstrous host complete. But, one of them, he realised, posing its
eternal riddle to the sands, had of old been glimpsed sufficiently to
seize its form in stone,--yet poorly seized, as a doll may stand for the
dignity of a human being or a child's toy represent an engine that draws
trains....

And he knelt there on his narrow ledge, the world of men forgotten. The
power that caught him was too great a thing for wonder or for fear; he
even felt no awe. Sensation of any kind that can be named or realised
left him utterly. He forgot himself. He merely watched. The glory numbed
him. Block and pencil, as the reason of his presence there at all, no
longer existed.... Yet one small link remained that held him to some kind of consciousness
of earthly things: he never lost sight of this--that, being just outside
the circle of evocation, he was safe, and that the man and woman, being
stationary in its untouched centre, were also safe. But--that a movement
of six inches in any direction meant for any one of them instant death. What was it, then, that suddenly strengthened this solitary link so that
the chain tautened and he felt the pull of it? Henriot could not say. He
came back with the rush of a descending drop to the realisation--dimly,
vaguely, as from great distance--that he was with these two, now at this
moment, in the Wadi Hof, and that the cold of dawn was in the air about
him. The chill breath of the Desert made him shiver. But at first, so deeply had his soul been dipped in this fragment of
ancient worship, he could remember nothing more. Somewhere lay a little
spot of streets and houses; its name escaped him. He had once been
there; there were many people, but insignificant people. Who were they? And what had he to do with them? All recent memories had been drowned in
the tide that flooded him from an immeasurable Past. And who were they--these two beings, standing on the white floor of sand
below him? For a long time he could not recover their names. Yet he
remembered them; and, thus robbed of association that names bring, he
saw them for an instant naked, and knew that one of them was evil. One
of them was vile. Blackness touched the picture there. The man, his name
still out of reach, was sinister, impure and dark at the heart. And for
this reason the evocation had been partial only. The admixture of an
evil motive was the flaw that marred complete success. The names then flashed upon him--Lady Statham--Richard
Vance. Vance! With a horrid drop from splendour into something mean
and sordid, Henriot felt the pain of it. The motive of the man was
so insignificant, his purpose so atrocious. More and more, with the
name, came back--his first repugnance, fear, suspicion. And human
terror caught him. He shrieked. But, as in nightmare, no sound escaped
his lips. He tried to move; a wild desire to interfere, to protect,
to prevent, flung him forward--close to the dizzy edge of the
gulf below. But his muscles refused obedience to the will. The
paralysis of common fear rooted him to the rocks. But the sudden change of focus instantly destroyed the picture;
and so vehement was the fall from glory into meanness, that it dislocated
the machinery of clairvoyant vision. The inner perception
clouded and grew dark. Outer and inner mingled in violent, inextricable
confusion. The wrench seemed almost physical. It happened
all at once, retreat and continuation for a moment somehow combined. And, if he did not definitely see the awful thing, at least he
was aware that it had come to pass. He knew it as positively as
though his eye were glued against a magnifying lens in the stillness
of some laboratory. He witnessed it. The supreme moment of evocation was close. Life, through that
awful sandy vortex, whirled and raged. Loose particles showered
and pelted, caught by the draught of vehement life that moulded the
substance of the Desert into imperial outline--when, suddenly, shot
the little evil thing across that marred and blasted it. Into the whirlpool flew forward a particle of material that was a
human being. And the Group-Soul caught and used it. The actual accomplishment Henriot did not claim to see. He was
a witness, but a witness who could give no evidence. Whether the
woman was pushed of set intention, or whether some detail of
sound and pattern was falsely used to effect the terrible result, he
was helpless to determine. He pretends no itemised account. She
went. In one second, with appalling swiftness, she disappeared,
swallowed out of space and time within that awful maw--one little
corpuscle among a million through which the Life, now stalking the
Desert wastes, moulded itself a troop-like Body. Sand took her. There followed emptiness--a hush of unutterable silence, stillness,
peace. Movement and sound instantly retired whence they
came. The avenues of Memory closed; the Splendours all went
down into their sandy tombs....

       *       *       *       *       *

The moon had sunk into the Libyan wilderness; the eastern sky was
red. The dawn drew out that wondrous sweetness of the Desert,
which is as sister to the sweetness that the moonlight brings. The
Desert settled back to sleep, huge, unfathomable, charged to the
brim with life that watches, waits, and yet conceals itself behind
the ruins of apparent desolation. And the Wadi, empty at his feet,
filled slowly with the gentle little winds that bring the sunrise. Then, across the pale glimmering of sand, Henriot saw a figure
moving.