But to feel again the rustle of ancient papyrus beneath her fingers; to decipher the messages pictured in quaint hieroglyphs by patient hands long since turned to dust, that the unborn legions of the future might sit at the feet of ageless philosophy; to delve once more into a past which was of a bygone age even when three wise men journeyed out of the East—the desire became an obsession which she tried vainly to exorcise.
She did indeed thrust the idea from her while the letters demanded her attention, but it returned again with unabated force with the first moment of leisure. Why should she not at least investigate the advertisement?
At luncheon, Mrs. Atterbury herself precipitated her decision.
"My dear, I wish you would go to Jennings' Art Shop for me this afternoon and select a Colonial frame for that tall mirror which hangs in my room. They sent me a gilt monstrosity when I ordered by 'phone, and I don't want the bother of going myself. If you walk straight across town until you come to the park, and follow its wall around the southern end to the east side you cannot miss it. The Egyptian Museum is on the opposite corner. By the way, Professor Stolz tells me that you, too, are interested in Egyptology. How did you ever acquire a liking for that sort of thing in the middle west?"
"Through a neighbor, who had made a study of it in Egypt," Betty replied readily enough. "It is really fascinating, like a grown-up picture puzzle. But about the mirror, does the shopman know the size you require?"
With the details of her commission carefully pigeon-holed in her mind, the girl started upon her errand. She walked briskly, for she realized that her time must be accounted for, and she had determined to use a portion of it for her own ends. Reaching the park, she struck boldly through it instead of following the longer way around, and no one who had known its every path could have chosen a more direct course than she, a self-confessed stranger.
The purchase was quickly consummated and she had turned to leave the shop, when a figure barred her way. She glanced up to find herself confronted by a tiny, fairy-like creature wrapped in sables with a great bunch of livid purple orchids at her belt. Her hair shimmered like spun gold beneath the fur toque and her face, innocent of cosmetics, was exquisitely fair.
For an instant the stranger visibly hesitated and then as if resolutely checking her impulse, turned and walked to a distant counter.
Betty, too, halted in uncontrollable surprise, then made her way to the street as if in a daze. She had never, to her knowledge, encountered the other before, yet the stranger's face had blanched at sight of her and in the round, babyish blue eyes which for a fleeting moment had met hers, she read unmistakable repulsion and an underlying desperate fear. For whom had the woman mistaken her? She was veiled, but the birthmark must have been plainly discernible. Could it be that her disfigurement was so great as to cause such repugnance and almost hysterical fear in a chance observer?
The sight of the museum, however, drove all thought of the odd encounter from her mind, and as she ascended the low, broad steps to the revolving entrance door she resolved to accept the proffered opportunity, whatever the result should Mrs. Atterbury discover her dereliction.