ll
as they are, low down in the hollows and far away, this wonderful silver
moon reveals even their slightest gestures; for their white robes
and black cloaks stand sharply out against the monotonous rose of the
desert. At times they call to one another in a harsh, aspirate tongue,
and then go off at a run, noiselessly, barefooted, with burnous flying,
like moths in the night. They lie in wait for the parties of tourists
who arrive from time to time. For the great symbols, during the hundreds
and thousands of years that have elapsed since men ceased to venerate
them, have nevertheless scarcely ever been alone, especially on nights
with a full moon. Men of all races, of all times, have come to wander
round them, vaguely attracted by their immensity and mystery. In
the days of the Romans they had already become symbols of a lost
significance, legacies of a fabulous antiquity, but people came
curiously to contemplate them, and tourists in toga and in peplus carved
their names on the granite of their bases for the sake of remembrance.

The tourists who have come to-night, and upon whom have pounced the
black-cloaked Bedouin guides, wear cap and ulster or furred greatcoat;
their intrusion here seems almost an offence; but, alas, such visitors
become more numerous in each succeeding year. The great town hard
by--which sweats gold now that men have started to buy from it its
dignity and its soul--is become a place of rendezvous and holiday
for the idlers and upstarts of the whole world. The modern spirit
encompasses the old desert of the Sphinx on every side. It is true that
up to the present no one has dared to profane it by building in the
immediate neighbourhood of the great statue. Its fixity and calm disdain
still hold some sway, perhaps. But little more than a mile away there
ends a road travelled by hackney carriages and tramway cars, and noisy
with the delectable hootings of smart motor cars; and behind the pyramid
of Cheops squats a vast hotel to which swarm men and women of fashion,
the latter absurdly feathered, like Redskins at a scalp dance; and sick
people, in search of purer air; and consumptive English maidens; and
ancient English dames, a little the worse for wear, who bring their
rheumatisms for the treatment of the dry winds.

Passing on our way hither, we had seen this road and this hotel and
these people in the glare of the electric lights, and from an orchestra
that was playing there we caught the trivia