‘There’s tremendous power in it,--an awful power,’ I stammered, more to break the oppressive pause than for any desire in me to speak with him. ‘It brings back Egypt in some extraordinary way--ancient Egypt, I mean--brings it close--into the heart.’ My words ran on of their own accord almost. I spoke with a hush, unwittingly. There was awe in me. Isley had moved away towards the window, leaving me face to face with this strange incarnation of another age. ‘It must,’ he replied, deep light still glowing in his eyes, ‘for the soul of the old days is in it. No one, I think, can hear it and remain the same. It expresses, you see, the essential passion and beauty of that gorgeous worship, that splendid faith, that reasonable and intelligent worship of the sun, the only scientific belief the world has ever known. Its popular form, of course, was largely superstitious, but the sacerdotal form--the form used by the priests, that is--who understood the relationship between colour, sound and symbol, was----’ He broke off suddenly, as though he had been speaking to himself. We sat down. George Isley leaned out of the window with his back to us, watching the desert in the moonless night. ‘You have tried its effect before upon--others?’ I asked point-blank. ‘Upon myself,’ he answered shortly. ‘Upon others?’ I insisted. He hesitated an instant. ‘Upon one other--yes,’ he admitted. ‘Intentionally?’ And something quivered in me as I asked it. He shrugged his shoulders slightly. ‘I’m merely a speculative archaeologist,’ he smiled, ‘and--and an imaginative Egyptologist. My bounden duty is to reconstruct the past so that it lives for others.’ An impulse rose in me to take him by the throat. ‘You know perfectly well, of course, the magical effect it’s sure--likely at least--to have?’ He stared steadily at me through the cigarette smoke. To this day I cannot think exactly what it was in this man that made me shudder. ‘I’m sure of nothing,’ he replied smoothly, ‘but I consider it quite legitimate to try. Magical--the word you used--has no meaning for me. If such a thing exists, it is merely scientific--undiscovered or forgotten knowledge.’ An insolent, aggressive light shone in his eyes as he spoke; his manner was almost truculent. ‘You refer, I take it, to--our friend--rather than to yourself?’ And with difficulty I met his singular stare. From his whole person something still emanated that was forbidding, yet overmasteringly persuasive. It brought back the notion of that invisible Web, that dim gauze curtain, that motionless Influence lying waiting at the centre for its prey, those monstrous and mysterious Items standing, alert and watchful, through the centuries. ‘You mean,’ he added lower, ‘his altered attitude to life--his going?’