I looked at her as she sat on the edge of the sarcophagus, kicking her feet to and fro and keeping her eyes quizzically on me. She seemed about nineteen; her manner rather older than that. It was sharp, and had a suggestion of a woman of the world. On the other hand, she was dressed quite girlishly; her skirt was short, she had on a simple straw hat with little trimming, and wore no ornaments save a plain gold bar fastening her collar.
“I hope you are not going to let me frighten you away,” she said roguishly. “I can easily find a more comfortable seat, and science must be before everything, as I know to my cost.”
“I cannot plead guilty to the charge of being scientific.”
“That’s a comfort. Why, then, do you want to examine this stupid old coffin? Curiosity, eh? All tourists are so curious. They will go miles to see a thing abroad they would not cross the road to look at at home.”
“I cannot say that my curiosity has not been rewarded. Although not quite satisfied.”
“How?”
“I should like, if not asking too much, to know what made you choose that gruesome relic for a resting-place?”
She looked at me queerly and laughed. “Your curiosity shall be satisfied. In the first place, it is more comfortable than it looks.”
I wondered a little at that, but did not say so.
“In the second place it is novel, in the third it is cool, and in the fourth it is a wholesome reminder, what I suppose you would call a memento mori.”