xcavating camps, and especially in the one to which
Michael belonged, showed as much regard for their personal appearance
and nicety of dress, even when their day's work was to be done in the
bowels of the earth, down a shaft as deep as a mine, as they did in the
golden days of their life at Oxford or Cambridge. Michael Amory was
perhaps as a rule the least careful of the digging party, because he
was by temperament a dreamer; and his friend, Freddy Lampton, knew that
if he was not careful and on his guard he would become "a slacker."
Freddy, in spite of his acknowledged ability as a scholar and
Egyptologist, was practical and conventional in his methods and mode of
living. Michael Amory had fits of exactness and fits of what he
considered conventionality; he had also his fits of slackness, days in
which Freddy Lampton would let his blue eyes rest on his
carelessly-tied necktie, or on his shoelaces, which were an offence to
his eyes. Freddy's exquisite delicacy of touch and his eyes, which
were trained to a fine pitch of exactitude for minute detail, two
characteristics essential for his work as an excavator, made it painful
for him to be in the company of anyone who offended his sense of
personal nicety.

But visions of Lampton's sister were to be dismissed. She would be
good-looking, of course, because Freddy's sister could scarcely be
anything else; his blue eyes, clear colouring and sunlit hair would be
beautiful in a girl. But Michael Amory had no desire to encourage any
thoughts which gave woman a place in his mind. The very visualizing of
Lampton as a girl, comical as it had been, had forced before his eyes
another face and another form which he had been striving to forget.
Whenever he was idle, and too often when he was busy over some piece of
work which ought to have engrossed his entire thoughts, her haunting
charm and beauty would suddenly become more real and vivid than the
bright blues and greens and reds of the pigments on the white walls of
the tomb upon which he was at work. With well-practised mind-control
he had learned to pull down a blind on her vision, to blot it out from
his thoughts. On this morning, when he was hurrying through his
dressing so as to be in time for breakfast, always a matter of
difficulty with him, even though he had many hours in which to put on
his few clothes, he shrank from thinking about the arrival of the girl
who was coming to live with her brother in this strange v