And now for my experience, which it is only fair to add, may after all
have been no more than a long and connected dream. Yet how was I to
dream of lands, events and people where of I have only the vaguest
knowledge, or none at all, unless indeed, as some say, being a part of
this world, we have hidden away somewhere in ourselves an acquaintance
with everything that has ever happened in the world. However, it does
not much matter and it is useless to discuss that which we cannot
prove.

Here at any rate is the story.



In a book or a record which I have written down and put away with
others under the title of "The Ivory Child," I have told the tale of a
certain expedition I made in company with Lord Ragnall. Its object was
to search for his wife who was stolen away while travelling in Egypt
in a state of mental incapacity resulting from shock caused by the
loss of her child under tragic and terrible circumstances. The thieves
were the priests of a certain bastard Arab tribe who, on account of a
birthmark shaped like the young moon which was visible above her
breast, believed her to be the priestess or oracle of their worship.
This worship evidently had its origin in Ancient Egypt since, although
they did not seem to know it, the priestess was nothing less than a
personification of the great goddess Isis, and the Ivory Child, their
fetish, was a statue of the infant Horus, the fabled son of Isis and
Osiris whom the Egyptians looked upon as the overcomer of Set or the
Devil, the murderer of Osiris before his resurrection and ascent to
Heaven to be the god of the dead.