nd instead they had made him uneasy and excited. His
interest had suddenly doubled. Though half afraid, he longed to know
what these two were up to--to follow the adventure to the bitter end. He
disregarded the warning of his host as well as the premonition in his
own heart. The sand had caught his feet.

There were moments when he laughed in utter disbelief, but these were
optimistic moods that did not last. He always returned to the feeling
that truth lurked somewhere in the whole strange business, and that if
he joined forces with them, as they seemed to wish, he would
witness--well, he hardly knew what--but it enticed him as danger does
the reckless man, or death the suicide. The sand had caught his mind.

He decided to offer himself to all they wanted--his pencil too. He would
see--a shiver ran through him at the thought--what they saw, and know
some eddy of that vanished tide of power and splendour the ancient
Egyptian priesthood knew, and that perhaps was even common experience in
the far-off days of dim Atlantis. The sand had caught his imagination
too. He was utterly sand-haunted.

VII

And so he took pains, though without making definite suggestion, to
place himself in the way of this woman and her nephew--only to find that
his hints were disregarded. They left him alone, if they did not
actually avoid him. Moreover, he rarely came across them now. Only at
night, or in the queer dusk hours, he caught glimpses of them moving
hurriedly off from the hotel, and always desertwards. And their
disregard, well calculated, enflamed his desire to the point when he
almost decided to propose himself. Quite suddenly, then, the idea
flashed through him--how do they come, these odd revelations, when the
mind lies receptive like a plate sensitised by anticipation?--that they
were waiting for a certain date, and, with the notion, came Mansfield's
remark about "the Night of Power," believed in by the old Egyptian
Calendar as a time when the supersensuous world moves close against the
minds of men with all its troop of possibilities. And the thought, once
lodged in its corner of imagination, grew strong. He looked it up. Ten
days from now, he found, Leyel-el-Sud would be upon him, with a moon,
too, at the full. And this strange hint of guidance he accepted. In his
present mood, as he admitted, smiling to himself, he could accept
anything. It was part of it, it belonged to the adventure. But, even
while he persuaded h