“We rose and walked across the moon-silvered lawn towards the little temple gleaming white amidst the lemon trees.
“I can never forget the beauty of the night. We could hear the gently murmuring sea where it lay under the moon, calm as a shining lake.
“The shadows of the trees lay motionless on the grass, and made a lovely tracery upon the temple roof, and the air was full of sweet scents. Once again, as when I was a boy, I picked a handful of roses, and laid them on the altar at the feet of the statue, which, carefully preserved during the war, stood once more on its marble pedestal. We knelt before it, and Chares offered a strange prayer. From his words I knew that he was praying to a Spirit, and that the statue before which he prayed only represented one little idea (which was all we poor human beings might understand) of some God greater than we could know, or than any statue could suggest. His prayer ended, he turned to me, and I saw him take something from the folds of his tunic. The moonlight glittered on what I now saw to be a crystal ball which he put into my hands.
“‘Look steadfastly within it,’ he said gravely. ‘Here, in this temple, it may be, you will understand.’
“Full of wonder, I began to gaze into the depths of the crystal, for the moonlight was so bright that everything reflected in the ball was plainly visible. At first I saw nothing but a little upside-down picture of the temple itself, and the overhanging trees, but after a moment this reflection melted away, and other scenes appeared, dissolving and reappearing so rapidly that I could catch but a glimpse of each. Then, all at once, a clear steady vision, upon which I looked intently, took the place of these shifting ones. There were pyramids in this scene, visible from the open door of a vast hall with sculptured figures at the entrance. And in that hall I saw myself! But I was not clothed in my ordinary linen tunic. I wore a strange robe, and a still stranger head-dress, and I was bending over something that looked like a plan of a building. For a moment I was puzzled, and altogether confused—till in a flash I remembered, and as the truth came to me, I gave a startled cry.
“Chares was looking at me with a smile as I raised my head.
“‘I was Sheshà—chief engineer and architect among the priests of Egypt, long ages ago,’ I exclaimed.
“‘Do you understand now why you were able to plan that mine, and save our city?’ asked Chares quietly. ‘It was knowledge you had already gained in another far-away life, though you were ignorant whence it came, and why the work was easy to you.’
“I was struck dumb with wonder, for not only did I remember my life as Sheshà, but fragments of many other lives since then began to come back to me, some vividly, some only as a sort of confused dream.