dine later in town, or to take a train, for somewhere, later, did not
turn in at the hotel gate, but swept past with siren shrieks, and tore
on, hoping to "rush" the steep hill to the Pyramid platform at top
speed. Only a few of the strongest succeeded, and, with a dash instead
of an ignominious crawl, triumphantly fanned their lights along the
base of that vast monument in which King Cheops vainly sought eternal
privacy. What would he say, we wondered, could he see the crowds of
tourists tearing out to pay him a call, on their way to the Sphinx?
Would he blight them with a curse, or would he remember pearly nights
of old, when his subjects assembled in multitudes for the feast of the
Goddess Neith when the moon was full, and all the white, brightly
painted houses along the Nile reflected their flowerlike illuminations
in the water? Anyhow (as Sir John Biddell would have said), this was
helping to keep his name before the public; and nothing could succeed
in vulgarizing his mountain of gold in its gleaming waves of desert,
under pulsing stars and creamy floods of moonlight.

Anthony had told me that the great "tip" was to go out while the less
instructed sightseers ate their dinner. Then, the desert was
comparatively empty; and, more important still, instead of having the
moon on her head, and her face in shadow, the Sphinx received its full
blaze in her farseeing eyes. Of this advice I meant to avail myself,
feeling vaguely guilty as I thought of the giver, who was absent from
the feast: Anthony Fenton, one of the finest young soldiers in Egypt,
who could be lionized in drawing-rooms at home if he would "stand for
it"! Anthony who, would he but accept the repentant overtures of that
tyrannical old prince, his maternal grandfather, might inherit a
fortune and a palace at Constantinople! Yet as Ahmed Antoun in his
green turban, he was "taboo" at our little party.