"So I owe you more than I knew. Yet, I'm not sure, for you see I was
abducted after all. Also if I had been taken there, probably George
would never have married me or seen me again, and that might have been
better for him."

"Why?" I asked. "You were all the world to him."

"Is any woman ever all the world to a man, Mr. Quatermain?"

I hesitated, expecting some attack.

"Don't answer," she went on, "it would be too long and you wouldn't
convince me who have been in the East. However, he was all the world
to me. Therefore his welfare was what I wished and wish, and I think
he would have had more of it if he had never married me."

"Why?" I asked again.

"Because I brought him no good luck, did I? I needn't go through all
the story as you know it. And in the end it was through me that he was
killed in Egypt."

"Or through the goddess Isis," I broke in rather nervously.

"Yes, the goddess Isis, a part I have played in my time, or something
like it. And he was killed in the temple of the goddess Isis. And
those papyri of which you read the translations in the museum, which
were given to me in Kendah Land, seem to have come from that same
temple. And--how about the Ivory Child? Isis in the temple evidently
held a child in her arms, but when we found her it had gone. Supposing