ossed by colonnades; there are ruined chapels and
vestibules and recesses; an altar upon which offerings had once been
made to the great gods; broken steps and closed and open doors, behind
which the ghosts of dead kings and queens, priests, priestesses and
nobles sit in ghostly council; through which they beckon you--_if you
belong_.

There has surely come to each of us, in this short span we term life,
the moment when, just introduced, we look into another's face and say
or think, "We have met before."

May it not have been that we once met to burn incense together before
the dread god Anubis, or to make offerings upon the altar erected to
the great god Ra Hamarkhis; or was it perchance that you, if you are a
woman, once waited at the temple gates to see him pass upon his return
from the great expedition to the land of Punt, which we call Somaliland
to-day?

Had the man with hawk-face who offers you a muffin or cup of tea to-day
once brought you gifts of ivory, or incense, or skin of panther from
the wonderland? Did he sweep the seething crowd with piercing eye to
find the face beloved, and pass on to the rolling of drums, the crash
of cymbals, the blaring of trumpets, to make obeisance to his monarch
and return thanks to the mighty gods?

Perchance!

But Damaris had no thought of the past as she stood amongst the pillars
of the colonnade which commemorate the great expedition; she was
enthralled with the hour, the solitude, the silence, as she hesitated,
wondering which way to go. Then, even as she hesitated, the silence
was broken by the distant throbbing of a drum.

It came from one of the villages far down the hill and, caught by the
evening breeze, was carried to the temple, to be multiplied a
hundredfold in the echoing roof.

All other sounds may cease way out in the East; birds may nest and
humans sleep; but the sound of the drum faileth never.

It is a message, a love-song, a lament, a prayer, and you hear it in
the desert as in the jungle, in the temple as in the courtyard behind
the hovel.

It is not a wise thing to listen to its call, for it can lead you off
the beaten track, or over the precipice or out into the desert to die.

It caught the girl's feet in the witchery of its rhythm and set them
moving upon the sand-covered floor of the Temple. Yet there was no
smile on her lips as, moved by whatever it is that causes us to do
strange things in the East, she danced like a wraith or a sylph,