He tried to steady his mind upon familiar objects, but wherever he
looked Sand stared him in the face. Outside these trivial walls the
Desert lay listening. It lay waiting too. Vance himself had dropped out
of recognition. He belonged to the world of things to-day. But this
woman and himself stood thousands of years away, beneath the columns of
a Temple in the sands. And the sands were moving. His feet went shifting
with them ... running down vistas of ageless memory that woke terror by
their sheer immensity of distance....

Like a muffled voice that called to him through many veils and
wrappings, he heard her describe the stupendous Powers that evocation
might coax down again among the world of men. "To what useful end?" he asked at length, amazed at his own temerity,
and because he knew instinctively the answer in advance. It rose through
these layers of coiling memory in his soul. "The extension of spiritual knowledge and the widening of life," she
answered. "The link with the 'unearthly kingdom' wherein this ancient
system went forever searching, would be re-established. Complete
rehabilitation might follow. Portions--little portions of these
Powers--expressed themselves naturally once in certain animal types,
instinctive life that did not deny or reject them. The worship of sacred
animals was the relic of a once gigantic system of evocation--not of
monsters," and she smiled sadly, "but of Powers that were willing and
ready to descend when worship summoned them." Again, beneath his breath, Henriot heard himself murmur--his own voice
startled him as he whispered it: "Actual bodily shape and outline?" "Material for bodies is everywhere," she answered, equally low; "dust to
which we all return; sand, if you prefer it, fine, fine sand. Life
moulds it easily enough, when that life is potent." A certain confusion spread slowly through his mind as he heard her. He
lit a cigarette and smoked some minutes in silence. Lady Statham and her
nephew waited for him to speak. At length, after some inner battling and
hesitation, he put the question that he knew they waited for. It was
impossible to resist any longer. "It would be interesting to know the method," he said, "and to revive,
perhaps, by experiment--"

Before he could complete his thought, she took him up:

"There are some who claim to know it," she said gravely--her eyes a
moment masterful. "A clue, thus followed, might lead to the entire
reconstruction I spoke of." "And the method?" he repeated faintly. "Evoke the Power by ceremonial evocation--the ritual is obtainable--and
note the form it assumes. Then establish it. This shape or outline once
secured, could then be made permanent--a mould for its return at
will--its natural physical expression here on earth." "Idol!" he exclaimed. "Image," she replied at once. "Life, before we can know it, must have a
body. Our souls, in order to manifest here, need a material vehicle." "And--to obtain this form or outline?" he began; "to fix it, rather?" "Would be required the clever pencil of a fearless looker-on--some one
not engaged in the actual evocation. This form, accurately made
permanent in solid matter, say in stone, would provide a channel always
open. Experiment, properly speaking, might then begin. The cisterns of
Power behind would be accessible." "An amazing proposition!" Henriot exclaimed. What surprised him was that
he felt no desire to laugh, and little even to doubt. "Yet known to every religion that ever deserved the name," put in Vance
like a voice from a distance. Blackness came somehow with his
interruption--a touch of darkness. He spoke eagerly. To all the talk that followed, and there was much of it, Henriot
listened with but half an ear. This one idea stormed through him with an
uproar that killed attention. Judgment was held utterly in abeyance. He
carried away from it some vague suggestion that this woman had hinted at
previous lives she half remembered, and that every year she came to
Egypt, haunting the sands and temples in the effort to recover lost
clues. And he recalled afterwards that she said, "This all came to me as
a child, just as though it was something half remembered." There was the
further suggestion that he himself was not unknown to her; that they,
too, had met before. But this, compared to the grave certainty of the
rest, was merest fantasy that did not hold his attention. He answered,
hardly knowing what he said. His preoccupation with other thoughts deep
down was so intense, that he was probably barely polite, uttering empty
phrases, with his mind elsewhere. His one desire was to escape and be
alone, and it was with genuine relief that he presently excused himself
and went upstairs to bed. The halls, he noticed, were empty; an Arab
servant waited to put the lights out. He walked up, for the lift had
long ceased running. And the magic of old Egypt stalked beside him. The studies that had
fascinated his mind in earlier youth returned with the power that had
subdued his mind in boyhood. The cult of Osiris woke in his blood again;
Horus and Nephthys stirred in their long-forgotten centres. There
revived in him, too long buried, the awful glamour of those liturgal
rites and vast body of observances, those spells and formulae of
incantation of the oldest known recension that years ago had captured
his imagination and belief--the Book of the Dead. Trumpet voices called
to his heart again across the desert of some dim past. There were forms
of life--impulses from the Creative Power which is the Universe--other
than the soul of man. They could be known. A spiritual exaltation,
roused by the words and presence of this singular woman, shouted to him
as he went. Then, as he closed his bedroom door, carefully locking it, there stood
beside him--Vance. The forgotten figure of Vance came up close--the
watching eyes, the simulated interest, the feigned belief, the detective
mental attitude, these broke through the grandiose panorama, bringing
darkness. Vance, strong personality that hid behind assumed nonentity
for some purpose of his own, intruded with sudden violence, demanding an
explanation of his presence. And, with an equal suddenness, explanation offered itself then and
there. It came unsought, its horror of certainty utterly unjustified;
and it came in this unexpected fashion:

Behind the interest and acquiescence of the man ran--fear: but behind
the vivid fear ran another thing that Henriot now perceived was vile. For the first time in his life, Henriot knew it at close quarters,
actual, ready to operate. Though familiar enough in daily life to be of
common occurrence, Henriot had never realised it as he did now, so close
and terrible. In the same way he had never _realised_ that he would
die--vanish from the busy world of men and women, forgotten as though he
had never existed, an eddy of wind-blown dust. And in the man named
Richard Vance this thing was close upon blossom. Henriot could not name
it to himself.