"Why?" I surlily inquired. "I thought you thought that idea of yours was too late to be of any use now?"
"I do think so," she replied. "Everything interesting is too late now. Still, you'd better go."
"Are you tired of me?" I stupidly catechised her.
"Well, I feel as if I should like to be alone in this wonderful place. I want to think back."
"I see," said I, scrambling up from my seat on the edge of the temple roof, and trying not to show by my expression that I was pleased, or that both my feet had gone to sleep. "In that case, I'll leave you to the spooks. May none but the right ones come!"
"Thank you," she returned dryly; and I limped off, walking on air, tempered with pins and needles. Joy! my luck had turned! At the top of the worn stone stairway, cut in the pylon, I met Biddy. She was dim as one of Cleopatra's Ptolemaic ghosts, in the darkness of the passage; but to me that darkness was brighter than the best thing in sunsets.
"Salutation to Caesar from one about to die!" I ejaculated.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I mean that both my feet are fast asleep, and I shall certainly fall and kill myself if I try to go one step further, up or down."
"You, the climber of impossible cliffs after sea-birds' nests!" she laughed. But she stood still.