Misty doubts were forming, when his dream guide paused before a heavy door of a typical native house which once had been of some consequence, and which faced the entrance to a mosque, indeed lay in the shadow of the minaret. It was opened from within, although she gave no perceptible signal, and its darkness, to Dr. Cairn's dulled perceptions, seemed to swallow them both up. He had an impression of a trap raised, of stone steps descended, of a new darkness almost palpable. The gloom of the place effected him as a mental blank, and, when a bright light shone out, it seemed to mark the opening of a second dream phase. From where the light came, he knew not, cared not, but it illuminated a perfectly bare room, with a floor of native mud bricks, a plastered wall, and wood-beamed ceiling. A tall sarcophagus stood upright against the wall before him; its lid leant close beside it ... and his black robed guide, her luminous eyes looking straightly over the yashmak, stood rigidly upright-within it! She raised the jewelled hands, and with a swift movement discarded robe and _yashmak_, and stood before him, in the clinging draperies of an ancient queen, wearing the leopard skin and the _uraeus_, and carrying the flail of royal Egypt! Her pale face formed a perfect oval; the long almond eyes had an evil beauty which seemed to chill; and the brilliantly red mouth was curved in a smile which must have made any man forget the evil in the eyes. But when we move in a dream world, our emotions become dreamlike too. She placed a sandalled foot upon the mud floor and stepped out of the sarcophagus, advancing towards Dr. Cairn, a vision of such sinful loveliness as he could never have conceived in his waking moments. In that strange dream language, in a tongue not of East nor West, she spoke; and her silvern voice had something of the tone of those Egyptian pipes whose dree fills the nights upon the Upper Nile--the seductive music of remote and splendid wickedness. "You know me, _now_?" she whispered. And in his dream she seemed to be a familiar figure, at once dreadful and worshipful. A fitful light played through the darkness, and seemed to dance upon a curtain draped behind the sarcophagus, picking out diamond points. The dreamer groped in the mental chaos of his mind, and found a clue to the meaning of this. The diamond points were the eyes of thousands of tarantula spiders with which the curtain was broidered. The sign of the spider! What did he know of it? Yes! of course; it was the secret mark of Egypt's witch-queen--of the beautiful woman whose name, after her mysterious death, had been erased from all her monuments. A sweet whisper stole to his ears: "You will befriend him, befriend my son--for _my_ sake." And in his dream-state he found himself prepared to foreswear all that he held holy--for her sake. She grasped both his hands, and her burning eyes looked closely into his. "Your reward shall be a great one," she whispered, even more softly.