The great double arch glowed in and through the green light that had been there since the Name of Power had first been spoken—it glowed with a light more bright yet more soft than the other light—a glory and splendour and sweetness unspeakable.
“Come!” cried Rekh-marā, holding out his hands.
“Come!” cried the learned gentleman, and he also held out his hands.
Each moved forward under the glowing, glorious arch of the perfect Amulet.
Then Rekh-marā quavered and shook, and as steel is drawn to a magnet he was drawn, under the arch of magic, nearer and nearer to the learned gentleman. And, as one drop of water mingles with another, when the window-glass is rain-wrinkled, as one quick-silver bead is drawn to another quick-silver bead, Rekh-marā, Divine Father of the Temple of Amen-Rā, was drawn into, slipped into, disappeared into, and was one with Jimmy, the good, the beloved, the learned gentleman.
And suddenly it was good daylight and the December sun shone. The fog has passed away like a dream.
The Amulet was there—little and complete in Jane’s hand, and there were the other children and the Psammead, and the learned gentleman. But Rekh-marā—or the body of Rekh-marā—was not there any more. As for his soul...
“Oh, the horrid thing!” cried Robert, and put his foot on a centipede as long as your finger, that crawled and wriggled and squirmed at the learned gentleman’s feet.
“That,” said the Psammead, “was the evil in the soul of Rekh-marā.”
There was a deep silence.