se. They beckoned, waving the straws
through which they sipped their drinks from tall glasses. Their voices
floated down to him as from the star-fields. He saw the sun gleam upon
the glasses, and heard the clink of the ice against the sides. The
stillness was amazing. He waved an answer, and passed quickly on. He
could not stop this sliding current of the years.

The tide moved faster, the draw of piled-up cycles urging it. He emerged
upon the plateau, and met the cooler Desert air. His feet went crunching
on the "desert-film" that spread its curious dark shiny carpet as far as
the eye could reach; it lay everywhere, unswept and smooth as when the
feet of vanished civilizations trod its burning surface, then dipped
behind the curtains Time pins against the stars. And here the body of
the tide set all one way. There was a greater strength of current,
draught and suction. He felt the powerful undertow. Deeper masses drew
his feet sideways, and he felt the rushing of the central body of the
sand. The sands were moving, from their foundation upwards. He went
unresistingly with them.

Turning a moment, he looked back at shining little Helouan in the blaze
of evening light. The voices reached him very faintly, merged now in a
general murmur. Beyond lay the strip of Delta vivid green, the palms,
the roofs of Bedrashein, the blue laughter of the Nile with its flocks
of curved felucca sails. Further still, rising above the yellow Libyan
horizon, gloomed the vast triangles of a dozen Pyramids, cutting their
wedge-shaped clefts out of a sky fast crimsoning through a sea of gold.
Seen thus, their dignity imposed upon the entire landscape. They towered
darkly, symbolic signatures of the ancient Powers that now watched him
taking these little steps across their damaged territory.

He gazed a minute, then went on. He saw the big pale face of the moon in
the east. Above the ever-silent Thing these giant symbols once
interpreted, she rose, grand, effortless, half-terrible as themselves.
And, with her, she lifted up this tide of the Desert that drew his feet
across the sand to Wadi Hof. A moment later he dipped below the ridge
that buried Helouan and Nile and Pyramids from sight. He entered the
ancient waters. Time then, in an instant, flowed back behind his
footsteps, obliterating every trace. And with it his mind went too. He
stepped across the gulf of centuries, moving into the Past. The Desert
lay before him--an open tomb wherein h