ing in
sects. Its adherents wear sackcloth and eat out of wooden basins. Mama
greatly enjoys these little observances. But you can imagine that I did
not ask you here to talk to you about mama. I will put on my Egyptian
costume. I shan't be long. In the meantime you might look at these
little things."

And she made me sit down before a cabinet containing a mummy-case,
several statuettes of the Middle Empire, a number of scarabs, and some
beautiful fragments of a ritual for the burial of the dead.

Left alone, I examined the papyrus with the more interest, inasmuch as
it was inscribed with a name I had already discovered on a seal. It was
the name of a scribe of King Seti I. I immediately applied myself to
noting the various interesting peculiarities the document exhibited.

I was plunged in this occupation for a longer time than I could
accurately measure, when I was warned by a kind of instinct that
some one was behind me. I turned and saw a marvellous being, her head
surmounted by a gold hawk and the pure and adorable lines of her young
body revealed by a clinging white sheath. Over this a transparent
rose-coloured tunic, bound at the waist by a girdle of precious stones,
fell and separated into symmetrical folds. Arms and feet were bare and
loaded with rings.

She stood before me, her head turned towards her right shoulder in
a hieratic attitude which gave to her delicious beauty something
indescribably divine.

"What! Is that you, Miss Morgan?"

"Unless it is Neferu-Ra in person. You remember the Neferu-Ra of Leconte
de Lisle, the Beauty of the Sun?"

"'Pallid and pining on her virgin bed,
Swathed in fine lawns from dainty foot to head.'{*}

* "Voici qu'elle languit sur son lit virginal,
Tres pale, enveloppee avec des fines toiles."

"But of course you don't know. You know nothing of verse. And yet verses
are so pretty. Come! Let's go to work."

Having mastered my emotion, I made some remarks to this charming young
person about her enchanting costume. I ventured to criticise certain
details as departing from archaeological accuracy. I proposed to replace
certain gems in the setting of the rings by others more universally in
use in the Middle Empire. Finally I decidedly opposed the wearing of
a clasp of _cloisonne_ enamel. In fact, this jewel was a most odious
anachronism. We at last agreed to replace this by a boss of precious
stones deep set in fine gold. She listened with great doc