Throughout the expedition to Sakhâra on the following day I could not
fail to note that Hassan was covertly watching me--and his expression
annoyed me intensely. It was that compound of compassion and resignation
which one might bestow upon a condemned man.
I charged him with it, but of course he denied any such sentiment.
Nevertheless, I knew that he entertained it, and, what was worse, I
began, in an uncomfortable degree, to share it with him! I cannot make
myself clearer. But I simply felt the normal world to be slipping
from under my feet, and, no longer experiencing a desire to clutch at
modernity as I had done after my meeting with the old woman, I found
myself to be reconciled to my fate!
To my fate? ... to what fate? I did not know; but I realised, beyond
any shade of doubt, that something tremendous, inevitable, and ultimate
was about to happen to me. I caught myself unconsciously raising the
heart of lapis-lazuli to my lips! Why I did so I had no idea; I seemed
to have lost identity. I no longer knew myself.
When Hassan parted from me at Mena House that evening he could not
disguise the fact that he regarded the parting as final; yet my plans
were made for several weeks ahead. Nor did I quarrel with the man's
curious attitude. _I_ regarded the parting as final, also!
In a word I was becoming reconciled--to something. It is difficult, all
but impossible, to render such a frame of mind comprehensible, and I
shall not even attempt the task, but leave the events of the night to
speak for themselves.
After dinner I lighted a cigarette, and avoiding a particularly
persistent and very pretty widow who was waiting to waylay me in the
lounge, I came out of the hotel and strolled along in the direction of
the Pyramid. Once I looked back--bidding a silent farewell to Mena
House! Then I took out the heart of lapis-lazuli from my pocket and
kissed it rapturously--kissed it as I had never kissed any object or
any person in the whole course of my life!
And why I did so I had no idea.
All who read my story will be prepared to learn that in this placid and
apparently feeble frame of mind I slipped from life, from the world. It
was not so. The modern man, the Saville Grainger once known in Fleet
Street, came to life again for one terrible, strenuous moment ... and
then passed out of life for ever.
Just before I reached the Pyramid, and at a lonely spot in the path--for
this was not a "Sphinx and Pyramid night"--that is to say, the moon was
not at the full--a tall, muffled native appeared at my elbow. He was the
same man who had brought me the heart of lapis-lazuli, or his double. I
started.
He touched me lightly on the arm.
"Follow," he said--and pointed ahead into the darkness below the
plateau.
I moved off obediently. Then--suddenly, swiftly, came revolt. The modern
man within me flared into angry life. I stopped dead, and
"Who are you? Where are you leading me?" I cried.