Allan Quatermain.

The Grange, Yorkshire.





SHE AND ALLAN



CHAPTER I

THE TALISMAN

I believe it was the old Egyptians, a very wise people, probably indeed
much wiser than we know, for in the leisure of their ample centuries
they had time to think out things, who declared that each individual
personality is made up of six or seven different elements, although the
Bible only allows us three, namely, body, soul, and spirit. The body
that the man or woman wore, if I understand their theory aright which
perhaps I, an ignorant person, do not, was but a kind of sack or fleshly
covering containing these different principles. Or mayhap it did not
contain them all, but was simply a house as it were, in which they lived
from time to time and seldom all together, although one or more of them
was present continually, as though to keep the place warmed and aired.

This is but a casual illustrative suggestion, for what right have
I, Allan Quatermain, out of my little reading and probably erroneous