ch is a habit strictly forbidden in the Marylebone Road.

Mounting the diminutive donkeys caused peals of laughter; the hamlets
of Naza'er-Rizkeh and Naza'el Ba'irait rang with the cries of the
cavalcade, and Damaris blindly followed Lady Thistleton's energetic
offspring, as with note-book and pencil they followed the guide in and
out of the regulation tombs of Biban el-Muluk, the history of which he
repeated with parrot-like monotony.

Lucy Jones, lighthearted tourist, thought the lunch awfully jolly in
the shade of the tomb, in fact, she made it a riotous feast, with the
help of others as young and non-temperamental as herself.

After all, what did it matter?

As Lucy said, "The dead had been such a jolly long time dead," and the
desolation of the valley made such a splendid contrast to the golden
sunshine and violent blue of the sky.

The zig-zag path down to Deir el-Bahari occasioned more laughter and
little screams and offers of help from the sterner male, who, under an
extreme insouciance, tried to hide the insecurity of his perch on the
back of the humble, scrambling quadruped.

When the laughing, jostling and somewhat dishevelled crowd streamed
back down the second incline and across the Central Terrace, en route
for the donkeys, it left Damaris standing with dancing eyes, and
laughing mouth under the blue and star-strewn ceiling of the Shrine.

And when the last sound of laughter, and clattering stone under nimble
hoof had melted away; when the sky had turned the marble temple mauve
and pink and deepest red, and back to pink, to mauve, to softest white;
when the first star had fastened the robe of day to the cloak of night,
and silence had fallen like balm upon the wound caused by raucous
voices, Damaris tip-toed down the steps and out into the Colonnade of
Punt.

She was quite alone.

CHAPTER XXI

"_No time so dark but through its woof there run
Some blessed threads of gold_."

C. P. CRANACH.

It is difficult--no, it is impossible to describe the wonder of Deir
el-Bahari under the moon, just as it is impossible to describe "the
light that never was, on land or sea," or the Taj Mahal, or a mother's
love.

To our eyes it is the picture of desolation. Just as it must have been
a picture of grandeur to those of the woman who built it, Queen
Hatshepu, sister, wife and queen of Totmes III.

It is built in terraces to which you climb by gentle incline; it is
surrounded and cr