awe-inspiring figures of the gods; and it may be, perhaps, that, after
having meditated so deeply in the shadow of their temples, and sought so
long the everlasting wherefore of life and death, they wished simply to
sum up in the smile of these closed lips the vanity of the most profound
of our human speculations. . . . It is said that the Sphinx was once
of striking beauty, when harmonious contour and colouring animated the
face, and it was enthroned at its full height on a kind of esplanade
paved with long slabs of stone. But was it then more sovereign than it
is to-night in its last decrepitude? Almost buried beneath the sand of
the Libyan desert, which now quite hides its base, it rises at this hour
like a phantom which nothing solid sustains in the air.

*****

It has gone midnight. In little groups the tourists of the evening
have disappeared; to regain perhaps the neighbouring hotel, where the
orchestra doubtless has not ceased to rage; or may be, remounting their
cars, to join, in some club of Cairo, one of those bridge parties, in
which the really superior intellects of our time delight; some--the
stouthearted ones--departed talking loudly and with cigar in mouth;
others, however, daunted in spite of themselves, lowered their voices as
people instinctively do in church. And the Bedouin guides, who a moment
ago seemed to flutter about the giant monument like so many black
moths--they too have gone, made restless by the cold air, which
erstwhile they had not known. The show for to-night is over, and
everywhere silence reigns.

The rosy tint fades on the Sphinx and the pyramids; all things in the
ghostly scene grow visibly paler; for the moon as it rises becomes
more silvery in the increasing chilliness of midnight. The winter mist,