[Illustration: "The Love Letter"]

Translation: Beautiful Queen, Star (of) My Heart (and) Soul. Give Me
(your) Love. Become My Wife (and) Goddess (for) Eternity.

Men-Kheper-(Ka) Ra.

I patted myself on the back, put the letter in the ground; and the
digging party was a wild success; but time passed on, and I had no
answer. What I expected was a reply in kind, an hieratic acceptance or
a demotic refusal; either one would be good practice for Monny. But not
a hieroglyph of any description came. I had to go on as if nothing had
happened. To be ignored was less tolerable than being refused. Monny's
silence began to get upon my nerves; and to make matters worse, there
was that desert trip hanging over my head. I knew even less about
organizing a desert trip than I knew about hieroglyphics; yet it had to
be done. As Sir Marcus said it was "up to me" to do it so well that
Cook would look sick. Anthony was absorbed in secret official duties
and open, unofficial duties. His was a great "thinking" part, and our
occupations kept us apart rather than brought us together. On the one
occasion when we were alone, he devoted four out of five minutes to
telling me what he had learned of the night disturbance in front of the
House of the Crocodile. "A Britisher of sorts" had come into the
street, guided by an Arab. There had been some dispute about payment,
and the Britisher had slapped the dragoman's face. This had been
followed, as he might have known it would, with a stab; a crowd had
assembled, and scattered before the police; the stabbed one had gone to
hospital, the stabber to prison. Altogether it was not surprising that
Mansoor, the suspicious caretaker, had feared a trap, and closed his
doors. Bedr el Gemaly, now one of the great unemployed, had been seen