shall _always_ compare with Egypt--everything else in the world. Other
interests and other memories may fade and change, but Egypt, the real
Egypt, the enchantment of that land, which is not a land, but a vast
processional epic, will never change, and it will not grow dim. I may
never visit it again, but I shall see it many times. I shall see the
sunrise above the palms, flooding the mountains with amethyst and
turning the sky to crimson gold. Again at sunset I shall sit in the vast
temple of Luxor and hear once more the Muezzin's call to prayer. I shall
race with Laura across the hot desert; I shall hear the cry of the
donkey-boys and the scarab-sellers and the wail for baksheesh; I shall
see our cavalcade scattering through the dust across the Libyan sands.
And I shall wander once more among the tombs of the kings, and follow
down the splendid passage where Amenophis lies with the repose of the
ages on his benignant face. I shall recall other lands and other ages,
too, but it is to Egypt that I shall turn after all the others have
drifted by; to her temples and her tombs--her glories of the past made
visible. Beyond the sands and the centuries they lie, but they are mine
now, and neither thief nor beggar, nor importunate creditor, can ever
take them away.