how, to insure the peace of the desert, I had offered a prize of a
large blue scarab as big as a paperweight, for that member of the Set
who did not even say "Oh!" to the Sphinx. "Antoun" had "vetted" the
alleged scarab and pronounced it a modern forgery; but nobody else knew
that, and as a prize it was popular.

The sky had that clear pale blue of dawn, when day first realizes that,
though born of night, it is no longer night. Casseopeia's Chair and
Orion were being tossed about the burning heavens like golden furniture
out of a house on fire; and one great star-jewel had fallen on the apex
of cruel Khufu's Pyramid. I should have liked to believe it was Sirius,
the "lucky" star sacred to Isis and Hathor; but Monny's schoolgirl
knowledge of astronomy bereft me of that innocent pleasure. No wonder
that the ancient Egyptians, with such jewels in their blue treasure-house,
were famous astrologers and astronomers before the days when
Rameses' daughter found Moses in the bulrushes of Roda Island!

The stars spoke to us as we walked, soft-footed, through the sand; and
the pure wind of the desert spoke other words of the same language, the
language of the Universe and of Nature. Here and there yellow lights in
a distant camp flashed out like fireflies; far away across the
billowing sands, rocks bleached like bone gave an effect of surf on an
unseen shore; now and then a silent, swift-moving Arab stealing out of
shadow, might have been the White Woman who haunts the Sphinx, hurrying
to a fatal tryst: and the Great Pyramid seemed to float between desert
sand and cloudless sky like the golden palace of Aladdin being
transported through air by the Geni of the Lamp. There never was such
gold as this gold of sand and pyramids, under the moon! We said that it
was like condensed sun rays, so vivid, so bright, that the moon could
not steal its colour. Cloudlike white figures were running up Khufu's