wed
the birth-mark for which she was famous, the mark of the young moon, the
sign of Isis.

I sprang from my horse and ran towards her. She looked up and saw me.
At first she frowned, then her face grew wondering, then tender, and I
thought that her red lips shaped my name. Moreover in her confusion she
let the _sistrum_ fall.

I muttered "Amada!" and stepped forward, but priests ran between us and
thrust me away. Next moment she had recovered the _sistrum_ and passed
on with her head bowed. Nor did she lift her eyes to look back.

"Begone, man!" cried a priest, "Begone, whoever you may be. Because you
wear Eastern armour do you think that you can dare the curse of Isis?"

Then I fell back, the holy image of the goddess passed and the
procession vanished through the pylon gate. I, Shabaka the Egyptian,
stood by my horse and watched it depart. I was happy because the lady
Amada was alive, well, and more beautiful than ever; also because she
had shown signs of joy and confusion at seeing me again. Yet I was
unhappy because I met her still filling a holy office which built a wall
between us, also because it seemed to me an evil omen that I should have
been repelled from her by a priest of Isis who talked of the curse of
the goddess. Moreover the sacred statue, I suppose by accident, turned
towards me as it passed and perhaps by the chance of light, seemed to
frown upon me.

Thus I thought as Shabaka hundreds of years before the Christian
era, but as Allan Quatermain the modern man, to whom it was given so
marvellously to behold all these things and who in beholding them, yet
never quite lost the sense of his own identity of to-day, I was amazed.
For I knew that this lady Amada was the same being though clad in
different flesh, as that other lady with whom I had breathed the magical
_Taduki_ fumes which had power to rend the curtain of the past, or,
perhaps, only to breed dreams of what it might have been.

To the outward eye, indeed she was different, as I was different,
taller, more slender, larger-eyed, with longer and slimmer hands than
those of any Western woman, and on the whole even more beautiful and
alluring. Moreover that mysterious look which from time to time I had
seen on Lady Ragnall's face, was more constant on that of the lady
Amada. It brooded in the deep eyes and settled in a curious smile about
the curves of the lips, a smile that was not altogether human, such a
smile as one might wear who had loo