t faint traces
in his heart by means of which their grandeur reached towards
interpretation. And all were symbols of a cosmic, deific nature; of
Powers that only symbols can express--prayer-books and sacraments used
in the Wisdom Religion of an older time, but to-day known only in the
decrepit, literal shell which is their degradation.

Grandly the figures moved across the valley bed. The powers of the
heavenly bodies once more joined them. They moved to the measure of a
cosmic dance, whose rhythm was creative. The Universe partnered them.

There was this transfiguration of all common, external things. He
realised that appearances were visible letters of a soundless language,
a language he once had known. The powers of night and moon and desert
sand married with points in the fluid stream of his inmost spiritual
being that knew and welcomed them. He understood.

Old Egypt herself stooped down from her uncovered throne. The stars sent
messengers. There was commotion in the secret, sandy places of the
desert. For the Desert had grown Temple. Columns reared against the sky.
There rose, from leagues away, the chanting of the sand.

The temples, where once this came to pass, were gone, their ruin
questioned by alien hearts that knew not their spiritual meaning. But
here the entire Desert swept in to form a shrine, and the Majesty that
once was Egypt stepped grandly back across ages of denial and neglect.
The sand was altar, and the stars were altar lights. The moon lit up the
vast recesses of the ceiling, and the wind from a thousand miles brought
in the perfume of her incense. For with that faith which shifts
mountains from their sandy bed, two passionate, believing souls invoked
the Ka of Egypt.

And the motions that they made, he saw, were definite harmonious
patterns their dark figures traced upon the shining valley floor. Like
the points of compasses, with stems invisible, and directed from the
sky, their movements marked the outlines of great signatures of
power--the sigils of the type of life they would evoke. It would come as
a Procession. No individual outline could contain it. It needed for its
visible expression--many. The descent of a group-soul, known to the
worship of this mighty system, rose from its lair of centuries and moved
hugely down upon them. The Ka, answering to the summons, would mate with
sand. The Desert was its Body.

Yet it was not this that he had come to fix with block and pencil. Not
ye