She stood and listened until she heard Ellen's voice looming from the side chapel on the western side, then, and just as though pulled by some invisible hand, she passed quietly through the antechamber into the sanctuary where, in the days of Ancient Egypt, the mighty Pharaoh, and he only, entered to commune with the gods at the birth of the new year; and where the mother of Hugh Carden Ali, stricken with the glory of the secret revealed, had fallen unconscious to the ground, over twenty years ago.
She stood quite still, her heart beating to suffocation; then she raised her hand and pushed the hair from her forehead.
"I feel just as though the roof was pressing down upon me," she whispered to herself. "As though, through me, something awful was going to happen. I——"
She turned, and almost ran out of the sanctuary, her footsteps waking the echoes of the roof which once had resounded to the clash of cymbal, the roll of drum and blare of trumpets. She heard Ellen's strident voice calling to her, telling her to come and join them in the crypts; she paid no heed, she ran on and out into the sunshine and down to the maid, who was still placidly crocheting.
And as she left the ruin, the mantle of depression fell from her, and she laughed as she caught the great dog and forced him to walk upon his hind-legs.
"No, Janie," she said that night, as the maid tucked her up in bed. "Here I stay until I have visited the Temple thoroughly, and I'll take you down into the creepy crypts and lock you in them if you worry any more. We all got up too early and hadn't had enough breakfast—that is why we disliked the place so much."
They stayed some days, and then took the public steamer home, Damaris bubbling over with high infectious spirits, which had their birth in a secret hope that she might find a letter from Ben Kelham upon her return.
She was leaning over the rail, thinking about him, as the boat made its lazy way down-stream.
"So funny," she was saying to herself as they approached Luxor under a sunset sky. "I wonder if he will be at the hotel. I somehow feel him quite near."
And then her thoughts were distracted by the exclamations and laughter of the passengers as they rushed to the side, causing the boat to take a distinct list.