og such as that which crept near to Mrs. Armine as she sat in
the garden of the villa, while Nigel, above her, watched the stars. As
Isaacson came near to it, it shivered and moved away, but not far. Then
it sat down and shook. Its ribs were like the ribs of a wrecked vessel.

Isaacson was close to the _Loulia_ now. He could see the balcony in the
stern where the doll had moved by the rail. It was lit by one electric
burner, and was not closed in with canvas, though there was a canvas
roof above it. Beyond it, through two large apertures, Isaacson could
see more light that gleamed in a room. He stood still again. Upon the
balcony he saw a long outline, the outline of a deckchair with a figure
stretched out in it. As he saw this the silence was again broken by
music. From the lighted room came the chilly and modern sound of a
piano.

Then Bella Donna had come down from her tower! Or had she never been
there?

Isaacson looked at the long outline, and listened. His mind was full of
that other music, the cry of Mohammedanism in the African night. This
music of Europe seemed out of place, like a nothing masquerading beneath
the stars. But in a moment he listened more closely; he moved a step
nearer. He was searching in his memory, was asking himself what that
music expressed, what it meant to him. No longer was it banal. There was
a sound in it, even played upon a piano, even heard in this night and
this desolate place between two deserts, of the elemental.

Bella Donna was playing that part of "The Dream of Gerontius" where the
soul of man is dismissed to its Maker.

"Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo!" (Go forth upon thy
journey, Christian soul! Go from this world!)

She was playing that, and the stretched figure in the long chair was
listening to it.

At that moment Isaacson felt glad that he had come to Egypt--glad in a
new way.

"Go forth ... go from this world!"

Almost he heard the deep and irreparable voice of the priest, and in the
music there was disintegration. In it the atoms parted. The temple
crumbled to let the inmate come forth.

Presently the music ceased. The murmur of a voice was audible. Then one
of the oblongs of light beyond the balcony was broken up by a darkness.
And the darkness came out, and bent above the stretched figure in the
chair. An instant later the electric burner that gave light to the
balcony was extinguished. Nigel and his wife were together in the
dimness, with t