"Upon the night of their arrival," continued the narrator, unheeding the interruption, "a fête was given in their honor by the Consul, Mustapha Aga. It was in the middle of this festivity, and during a dance by the Gaivasi girls of Luxor, that a strange nomad from the desert made his appearance unexpectedly. The Sheik Ben Ali, he was called, and his errand was to inform Mustapha Aga of the discovery, near a certain oasis, of an object of unusual interest, nothing less than a mummy case of surpassing beauty which had once held the body of a high priestess of Amen Ra." "Hold on!" Dunbarton interrupted, relinquishing his grasp upon his knee. "Your local color is so intense that I feel myself in danger of becoming interested." "Just wait until I get a little farther," answered Morewood, with a touch of triumph; "I only wish you could hear the story as it was told to me." "By whom, if one might ask?" inquired Dunbarton, and his friend replied impressively: "By a venerable man whom I met by the merest chance late one afternoon in the Egyptian room of the Metropolitan Museum--a strange old man, poorly dressed, but who had evidently seen better days, for he had traveled much in the East and knew the country well." "I recognize the type," Dunbarton commented, "and make no doubt your learned friend was in the end prevailed upon to accept a trifling loan----" "That has nothing to do with the story," Morewood retorted. "How far had I got?" "You were in Luxor, at the last reports," the other prompted, "attending an informal little dance of Gaivasi ladies." "Yes, yes," cried Morewood, taking up his thread again. "It was, indeed, a scene to captivate the traveler's fancy." "Never mind the scene!" "I don't intend to. Escorted by Mustapha Aga and his guard, they left the revels and followed the mysterious sheik out into the desert to a grove of palm-trees, where, bathed in the Egyptian moonlight, lay the marvelous mummy-case." "What had become of the mummy?" asked Dunbarton. "Hush!" Morewood whispered reverently. "Hear the story. The case, though decorated throughout with a surpassing skill, was most remarkable for the extreme beauty of the woman's face portrayed upon its upper end, in colors which had defied the ravages of time." "I know the kind!" the painter put in. "Flat nose, wide mouth, two staring eyes, that might be either rights or lefts." "The art of that period was, as we know, conventional," returned Morewood, "and it was that very fact which made this particular painting so remarkable, for it was realistic, vivid; it conveyed, indeed, a distinct impression of personality." "Oh, amazing!" Dunbarton murmured.