‘You liked it?’ I heard his thin voice asking. There was no interest, no expression; it was not the real Isley who spoke; it was the little part of him that had come back. He smiled like a marvellous automaton.
Mechanically I took the cigarette he offered me, thinking confusedly what answer I could make.
‘It’s irresistible,’ I murmured; ‘I understand that it’s easier to go.’
‘Sweeter as well,’ he whispered with a sigh, ‘and very wonderful!’
XII
The hand that lit my cigarette, I saw, was trembling. A desire to do something violent woke in me suddenly—to move energetically, to push or drive something away.
‘What was it?’ I asked abruptly, in a louder, half-challenging voice, intended for the man at the piano. ‘Such a performance—upon others—without first asking their permission—seems to me unpermissible—it’s——’
And it was Moleson who replied. He ignored the end of my sentence as though he had not heard it. He strolled over to our side, taking a cigarette and pressing it carefully into shape between his long thin fingers.
‘You may well ask,’ he answered quietly; ‘but it’s not so easy to tell. We discovered it’—he nodded towards Isley—‘two years ago in the “Valley.” It lay beside a Priest, a very important personage, apparently, and was part of the Ritual he used in the worship of the sun. In the Museum now—you can see it any day at the Boulak—it is simply labelled “Hymn to Ra.” The period was Aknahton’s.’
‘The words, yes,’ put in Isley, who was listening closely.