"Ah!" sighed madame, archly lowering fringes of black lashes. "So you are not so English that you cannot make love!"
"On the contrary," he replied, "I am so Irish that I cannot help it!"
She rose slowly to her feet. Her moving robe diffused a faint perfume. For a moment Desmond feared that he had offended her. Naively, he revealed his concern.
"Come, my desert man!" she said. "Walk with me beside holy Nile, and tell me that I am beautiful, in that deep, deceptive voice which has such tender notes! With what sweet English maids have you rehearsed the ballad of love, my friend! You strike its chords with rare proficiency!"
Many regarded Desmond's naYvete as a pose. It was not a conscious pose; yet he knew a certain sense of pagan triumph as he came out from the Winter Palace, past the bench upon which were seated the picturesque dragomans, and so on into the shadowed part of the street between the hotel entrance and the arcade of shops.
Beside him walked the most beautiful and elegant woman of all that gay gathering. An old roue whose name may be found in Debrett bowed to madame in mid-Victorian fashion, and eyed her cavalier unkindly. Lord Abbeyrock, said to be the handsomest man in Europe, who had been haunting the foyer for an hour past, bit savagely at his moustache and turned brusquely to re-enter the hotel. Quite a company of young cosmopolitan bloods followed with longing eyes the exquisite figure in the amazing cloak of flamingo red. With manifest reluctance, a stolid New York business magnate — whose wife was in Cairo — quitted his strategic post near the dragomans* bench, hitherto held against all comers.
Mystery is woman's supreme charm. It is the mystery of dark eyes peeping from a mushrabiyeh lattice that constitutes the love lure of the East. Mme. de Medicis was utterly mysterious — tempting, taunting, unfathomable — at once a Sibyl and a Cleopatra.
Who was she, and from whence did she come? She was steeped in mysticism, spoke intimately of the strange writings of Eliphas Levi, and quoted Pythagoras and Zarathustra with the same facility wherewith Desmond, of catholic literary sympathies, quoted Kipling and Yeats. She had tremendous intel lectual fascination. At one moment she made him feel like a child; in the next, her wondrous eyes would look into his own, and they were the luresome eyes of a ghaziyeh, setting his blood more quickly coursing.
Groups of tourists lingered around the native shops, volubly chattering of their travels. Boatmen and donkey boys sat upon the low parapet, watching the idle throng and smiling theninscrutable Egyptian smiles. In the river lay the lighted daha-beahs. From one of them — that of Diamond Jake — came the softened tones of a sweet violin.
"Art lays its treasures at the feet of Mammon," murmured madame.
For a moment she paused, resting her slender hand upon Desmond's arm. The strains of a Spanish caprice of Sarasate's, played by one of Europe's greatest violinists, floated across the waters of the Nile.
It was Luxor reborn — Luxor, that has known so much of peace and war, of fashion and art; Luxor, that once was Thebes, beloved of Amen, the city of temples and palaces. And near them, beside them, cloaked in velvet night, swooned the deathless mystery of that historic land.
Desmond looked long and ardently at his companion, as she moved onward again. Only she had a true place in a picture of the greater city which now was rising up before him. The modem, empty Luxor was fading, and upon rich banks of the ancient river, looming shadowly, were the stately walls of the city of a hundred gates.
He seemed to be pacing beside the Nile with a Pharaoh's queen on a night of long, long ago" Tell me about your work in the temple," she said, breaking an eloquent silence. "You are looking for the sacred ornaments of the Princess Taia, are you not?"
"Yes," Desmond answered dreamily, "under the floor of what is sometimes called the Treasure Room."
"You know that the Egyptian government expedition, under Van Kuyper, is similarly engaged at Biban el Muluk?"
"Van Kuyper is wrong," snapped Desmond, with sudden animation; for the enthusiast within him was awakened by the challenge in her words. "He confuses the princess with the queen, whereas they belonged to different families. I am glad he is wrong. He deserves to fail."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because," said Desmond grimly, **Van Kuyper is no ture Egyptologist. He is an impostor, and the so-called government expedition is no more than a marauding expedition. It is subsidised by a millionaire collector, and if the jewels were found by Van Kuyper they would mysteriously disappear — and reappear in New York. It's a scandal! Such things belong neither to the Egyptian government nor to any purse-proud collector rich enough to pay to have them stolen. They belong to the world."
His enthusiasm was infectious. Covertly, Mme. De Medicis watched him; and in the dusk the man's strong, rugged profile resembled that of the carven Rameses who holds eternal court amid the ruins of his great temple-palace.
"You, then, seek for love of seeking?" she asked softly.
"I revere the grandeur that was Egypt," he replied. 'To commercialise such majesty is intolerable!"
"May it not also be dangerous?"
"Well!" Desmond laughed. "Princess Taia certainly had an odd reputation!"
"You refer to the fact that she was a sorceress?"
Desmond started, glancing aside at his lovely companion. Then he laughed again. "You seem to know everything!" he declared. "At times, when you question me on some point of Egyptology, I feel that you are amusing yourself. Yes — the princess was famous for her beauty and notorious for her witchcraft."
"Beware, then, that you are not playing with fire," said Mme. de Medicis softly. "Others have suffered — is it not so?"
Desmond pulled up suddenly. They had passed the shops, and passed the imitation temple gateway which marks the boundary of a hotel garden. They were alone with the night mystery of the Nile, upon a footpath leading to an old shadoof.
Something sombre, a new fascination, had come into the woman's silver voice. The moon poured its radiance quench-ingly upon the flaming figure of this strange woman who warned him to beware of a sorceress dead twelve hundred years before the dawn of Christianity. Her tigress eyes looked fully into his own; and now their glance chilled him coldly, as but a moment ago it had warmed him like wine.
"You speak in riddles," he said awkwardly, again become the boy who questions the Sibyl.
"Have you then heard and seen nothing strange in the temple?" she whispered, and looked about her fearfully.
"I have seen nothing," he replied, "but I have heard much. Some of the Arabs in these parts regard the ruins of Medinet Habu as haunted, I am aware; but if one listened to natives, one could not avoid the conclusion that the whole of Egypt is haunted. My headman and several others come from Suefee, in the Fayum, and are of different mettle."
"And so they camp in the temple?"
"Well," Desmond admitted, "not exactly. They sleep in the village, as a matter of fact — or have been doing so for some little time past."
"And you sleep in Luxor?"
He stared fully into the lovely, sombre face.
"You don't seriously believe that I am afraid to sleep in the temple?" he inquired slowly.
"Not at all; but I think you are wise to avoid doing so."
Awhile longer he watched her, betwixt anger and perplexity, until her carmine lips softened, parted, and hinted the gleam of pearly teeth. She dropped her heavy lashes, then raised tham again; and her wonderful eyes were changed. They chilled no longer. Mme de Medicis raised one slender, round, ivory arm and laid her jewelled fingers caressingly upon Desmond's breast. The flaming cloak fell back, revealing a peeping shoulder wooed by the daring moon.
"How I love the English character!" she whispered, lending the words a bewitching little foreign intonation. "Ah, my Irish friend, forgive me — but you are so perfectly English! Look!" She moved her hand and pointed out across the silvery Nile.