The cause of the spell is that this comes in contact with this, and
that this, which I show you, blends with, fades into, this," how could
it advantage any one? Nothing could be made clearer, nothing be really
explained. The ineffable is, and must ever remain, something remote and
mysterious.

And so one may say many things of this painted chamber of Philae, and
yet never convey, perhaps never really know, the innermost cause of its
charm. In it there is obvious beauty of form, and a seizing beauty
of color, beauty of sunlight and shadow, of antique association. This
turquoise blue is enchanting, and Isis was worshipped here. What has the
one to do with the other? Nothing; and yet how much! For is not each of
these facts a thread in the tapestry web of the spell? The eyes see the
rapture of this very perfect blue. The imagination hears, as if very
far off, the solemn chanting of priests and smells the smoke of strange
perfumes, and sees the long, aquiline nose and the thin, haughty lips of
the goddess. And the color becomes strange to the eyes as well as
very lovely, because, perhaps, it was there--it almost certainly was
there--when from Constantinople went forth the decree that all Egypt
should be Christian; when the priests of the sacred brotherhood of Isis
were driven from their temple.

Isis nursing Horus gave way to the Virgin and the Child. But the cycles
spin away down "the ringing grooves of change." From Egypt has passed
away that decreed Christianity. Now from the minaret the muezzin cries,
and in palm-shaded villages I hear the loud hymns of earnest pilgrims
starting on the journey to Mecca. And ever this painted chamber shelters
its mystery of poetry, its mystery of charm. And still its marvellous
colors are fresh as in the far-off pagan days, and the opening
lotus-flowers, and the closed lotus-buds, and the palm and the papyrus,
are on the perfect columns. And their intrinsic loveliness, and their
freshness, and their age, and the mysteries they have looked on--all
these facts are part of the spell that governs us to-day. In Edfu one is
enclosed in a wonderful austerity. And one can only worship. In Philae
one is wrapped in a radiance of color and one can only dream. For there
is coral-pink, and there a wonderful green, "like the green light that
lingers in the west," and there is a blue as deep as the blue of a
tropical sea; and there are green-blue and lustrous, ardent red. And the
odd fantasy in the co