There followed then no lengthy indecision. Preparation was even shorter
still. He was always ready for a move, and his sojourn in cities was but
breathing-space while he gathered pennies for further wanderings. An
enormous kit-bag--sack-shaped, very worn and dirty--emerged speedily
from the bottom of a cupboard in the wall. It was of limitless capacity.
The key and padlock rattled in its depths. Cigarette ashes covered
everything while he stuffed it full of ancient, indescribable garments.
And his voice, singing of those "yellow bees in the ivy bloom," mingled
with the crying of the rising wind about his windows. His restlessness
had disappeared by magic.

This time, however, there could be no haunted Pelion, nor shady groves
of Tempe, for he lived in sophisticated times when money markets
regulated movement sternly. Travelling was only for the rich; mere
wanderers must pig it. He remembered instead an opportune invitation to
the Desert. "Objective" invitation, his genial hosts had called it,
knowing his hatred of convention. And Helouan danced into letters of
brilliance upon the inner map of his mind. For Egypt had ever held his
spirit in thrall, though as yet he had tried in vain to touch the great
buried soul of her. The excavators, the Egyptologists, the
archaeologists most of all, plastered her grey ancient face with labels
like hotel advertisements on travellers' portmanteaux. They told where
she had come from last, but nothing of what she dreamed and thought and
loved. The heart of Egypt lay beneath the sand, and the trifling robbery
of little details that poked forth from tombs and temples brought no
true revelation of her stupendous spiritual splendour. Henriot, in his
youth, had searched and dived among what material he could find,
believing once--or half believing--that the ceremonial of that ancient
system veiled a weight of symbol that was reflected from genuine
supersensual knowledge. The rituals, now taken literally, and so