To be alone in the Desert meant to be alone with the imaginative picture
of what Vance--he knew it with such strange certainty--hoped to bring
about there. There was absolutely no evidence to justify the grim suspicion. It
seemed indeed far-fetched enough, this connection between the sand and
the purpose of an evil-minded, violent man. But Henriot saw it true. He
could argue it away in a few minutes--easily. Yet the instant thought
ceased, it returned, led up by intuition. It possessed him, filled his
mind with horrible possibilities. He feared the Desert as he might have
feared the scene of some atrocious crime. And, for the time, this dread
of a merely human thing corrected the big seduction of the other--the
suggested "super-natural." Side by side with it, his desire to join himself to the purposes of the
woman increased steadily. They kept out of his way apparently; the offer
seemed withdrawn; he grew restless, unable to settle to anything for
long, and once he asked the porter casually if they were leaving the
hotel. Lady Statham had been invisible for days, and Vance was somehow
never within speaking distance. He heard with relief that they had not
gone--but with dread as well. Keen excitement worked in him underground. He slept badly. Like a schoolboy, he waited for the summons to an
important examination that involved portentous issues, and contradictory
emotions disturbed his peace of mind abominably. VIII


But it was not until the end of the week, when Vance approached him with
purpose in his eyes and manner, that Henriot knew his fears unfounded,
and caught himself trembling with sudden anticipation--because the
invitation, so desired yet so dreaded, was actually at hand. Firmly
determined to keep caution uppermost, yet he went unresistingly to a
secluded corner by the palms where they could talk in privacy. For
prudence is of the mind, but desire is of the soul, and while his brain
of to-day whispered wariness, voices in his heart of long ago shouted
commands that he knew he must obey with joy. It was evening and the stars were out. Helouan, with her fairy
twinkling lights, lay silent against the Desert edge. The sand was at
the flood. The period of the Encroaching of the Desert was at hand, and
the deeps were all astir with movement. But in the windless air was a
great peace. A calm of infinite stillness breathed everywhere. The flow
of Time, before it rushed away backwards, stopped somewhere between the
dust of stars and Desert. The mystery of sand touched every street with
its unutterable softness. And Vance began without the smallest circumlocution. His voice was low,
in keeping with the scene, but the words dropped with a sharp
distinctness into the other's heart like grains of sand that pricked the
skin before they smothered him. Caution they smothered instantly;
resistance too. "I have a message for you from my aunt," he said, as though he brought
an invitation to a picnic. Henriot sat in shadow, but his companion's
face was in a patch of light that followed them from the windows of the
central hall. There was a shining in the light blue eyes that betrayed
the excitement his quiet manner concealed. "We are going--the day after
to-morrow--to spend the night in the Desert; she wondered if, perhaps,
you would care to join us?" "For your experiment?" asked Henriot bluntly. Vance smiled with his lips, holding his eyes steady, though unable to
suppress the gleam that flashed in them and was gone so swiftly. There
was a hint of shrugging his shoulders. "It is the Night of Power--in the old Egyptian Calendar, you know," he
answered with assumed lightness almost, "the final moment of
Leyel-el-Sud, the period of Black Nights when the Desert was held to
encroach with--with various possibilities of a supernatural order. She
wishes to revive a certain practice of the old Egyptians. There _may_ be
curious results. At any rate, the occasion is a picturesque one--better
than this cheap imitation of London life." And he indicated the lights,
the signs of people in the hall dressed for gaieties and dances, the
hotel orchestra that played after dinner. Henriot at the moment answered nothing, so great was the rush of
conflicting emotions that came he knew not whence. Vance went calmly on. He spoke with a simple frankness that was meant to be disarming. Henriot
never took his eyes off him. The two men stared steadily at one another. "She wants to know if you will come and help too--in a certain way
only: not in the experiment itself precisely, but by watching merely
and--" He hesitated an instant, half lowering his eyes. "Drawing the picture," Henriot helped him deliberately. "Drawing what you see, yes," Vance replied, the voice turned graver in
spite of himself. "She wants--she hopes to catch the outlines of
anything that happens--"

"Comes." "Exactly. Determine the shape of anything that comes. You may remember
your conversation of the other night with her. She is very certain of
success." This was direct enough at any rate. It was as formal as an invitation to
a dinner, and as guileless. The thing he thought he wanted lay within
his reach. He had merely to say yes. He did say yes; but first he looked
about him instinctively, as for guidance. He looked at the stars
twinkling high above the distant Libyan Plateau; at the long arms of the
Desert, gleaming weirdly white in the moonlight, and reaching towards
him down every opening between the houses; at the heavy mass of the
Mokattam Hills, guarding the Arabian Wilderness with strange, peaked
barriers, their sand-carved ridges dark and still above the Wadi Hof. These questionings attracted no response. The Desert watched him, but it
did not answer. There was only the shrill whistling cry of the lizards,
and the sing-song of a white-robed Arab gliding down the sandy street. And through these sounds he heard his own voice answer: "I will
come--yes. But how can I help? Tell me what you propose--your plan?" And the face of Vance, seen plainly in the electric glare, betrayed his
satisfaction. The opposing things in the fellow's mind of darkness
fought visibly in his eyes and skin. The sordid motive, planning a
dreadful act, leaped to his face, and with it a flash of this other
yearning that sought unearthly knowledge, perhaps believed it too. No
wonder there was conflict written on his features. Then all expression vanished again; he leaned forward, lowering his
voice. "You remember our conversation about there being types of life too vast
to manifest in a single body, and my aunt's belief that these were known
to certain of the older religious systems of the world?" "Perfectly." "Her experiment, then, is to bring one of these great Powers back--we
possess the sympathetic ritual that can rouse some among them to
activity--and win it down into the sphere of our minds, our minds
heightened, you see, by ceremonial to that stage of clairvoyant vision
which can perceive them." "And then?"