to
her whole person. It was incredibly moving. To this deep passion was due
the power he had felt. It was her entire life; she lived for it, she
would die for it. Her calmness of manner enhanced its effect. Hence the
strength of those first impressions that had stormed him. The woman had
belief; however wild and strange, it was sacred to her. The secret of
her influence was--conviction.

His attitude shifted several points then. The wonder in him passed over
into awe. The things she knew were real. They were not merely
imaginative speculations.

"I knew I was not wrong in thinking you in sympathy with this line of
thought," she was saying in lower voice, steady with earnestness, and as
though she had read his mind. "You, too, know, though perhaps you hardly
realise that you know. It lies so deep in you that you only get vague
feelings of it--intimations of memory. Isn't that the case?"

Henriot gave assent with his eyes; it was the truth.

"What we know instinctively," she continued, "is simply what we are
trying to remember. Knowledge is memory." She paused a moment watching
his face closely. "At least, you are free from that cheap scepticism
which labels these old beliefs as superstition." It was not even a
question.

"I--worship real belief--of any kind," he stammered, for her words and
the close proximity of her atmosphere caused a strange upheaval in his
heart that he could not account for. He faltered in his speech. "It is
the most vital quality in life--rarer than deity." He was using her own
phrases even. "It is creative. It constructs the world anew--"

"And may reconstruct the old."

She said it, lifting her face above him a little, so that her eyes
looked down into his own. It grew big and somehow masculine. It was the
face of a priest, spiritual power in it. Where, oh where in the echoing
Past had he known this woman's soul? He saw her in another setting, a
forest of columns dim about her, towering above giant aisles. Again he
felt the Desert had come close. Into this tent-like hall of the hotel
came the sifting of tiny sand. It heaped softly about the very furniture
against his feet, blocking the exits of door and window. It shrouded the
little present. The wind that brought it stirred a veil that had hung
for ages motionless....

She had been saying many things that he had missed while his mind went
searching. "There were types of life the Atlantean system knew it might
revive--life unmanifested