have wished it, when I reflected that very likely before midnight a lion might pass that way.

We found that these wonderful columns of granite were coped with great slabs of granite. These granite slabs were of astonishing breadth and thickness. This temple, as it is called, had probably been a tomb. I took good care to see that there was no other means of ascent to the place where we had chosen to spend the night than the one by which we had ascended. And I remember how eagerly I wished for a crowbar in order that I might break down a little of the débris, so that the ascent might be less easy for prowling beasts.

But as there was nothing of the sort at hand, I dismissed the two Arabs and resolved to be as brave, if possible, as the singularly brave and beautiful woman who had come here to hear the voices of desolation.

The sky was rimmed with yellow; yellow to the east, yellow to the west; a world of soft and restful yellow that melted away by gradations as the eye ascended from the desert. It was like melody in its serene harmonies and awful glory.

And she at my side partook of it all; she breathed it, absorbed it, literally became a part of it. I saw her grow and glow. Soul and body I saw her dilate and expand till she was in absolute harmony with the awe and splendor that encompassed us. I felt that she had been in the midst of, even a part of, this tawny desolation ages and ages before. Perhaps her soul had been born here, born before the pyramids.

CHAPTER III.

With my own hands I spread her couch of skins and rugs in the remotest corner of a great stone slab that still lifted its unbroken front, in defiance of time, high above the tawny sands of the desert. The night was very sultry, even here on this high and roomy summit. The broad, deep slab of granite was still warm with sunshine gone away, and gave out heat like a dying furnace. The steep and arduous ascent had taxed her strength, and unloosing her robe as I turned to examine more minutely our strange quarters on the top of this lofty tomb, or temple, she sank to rest, half reclining on her arm, her chin in her upturned palm, her face lifted away toward the rising moon.

Half a dozen paces to the right I saw two tall and ponderous columns of granite standing in line with those that supported the great slab on which she rested. Evidently these grand and solitary columns had also once been topped by granite slabs. But these had fallen to the ground under the leveling feet of many 

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