A suite of rooms had been prepared, by John Cumberland’s orders, in the furnishing of which, while a definite Egyptian note had been struck, the total leaned to modernity. For Zalithea he had conceived an affection which, when he tried to analyze it, seemed to be compounded of the paternal, the scientific, and--he could not otherwise define it--the maternal! She was his child in a sense not hitherto comprehended in human relations; and she was the embodiment of that second great passion of his life--Egyptology. Lovingly he had studied her. He had noted her early acceptance of those mechanical things which at first had appalled her; her easy, youthful adaptability to wildly strange environment. A certain shrinking from her--involuntary, superstitious--of which for a time he had been conscious, left him utterly in the sunshine of her warm humanity. Barry’s attitude occasioned him many anxious hours. That the boy should lose his heart to this beautiful mystery was no matter for wonder. He had eyes, ears, imagination. And Zalithea would have inflamed any man of his age not made of wood or stone with whom she was thrown into contact. Furthermore, that the meeting of these two was preordained, John Cumberland found it hard to doubt. He knew that Barry thought so; and he did not blame him. For what other explanation could there be of those strange pre-glimpses which he had had of her? He had never doubted his son’s word. But he had found something phenomenal in the story which had led him to look upon it as the product of an excited imagination. How little he had known, in those days, of the wonderful! How sceptical he had been! From the big armchair in which he was seated in the library, he looked up at a wall painting from Medinet Habu. Quite clearly he recalled that he had been seated here, looking at this very painting, on the night that Danbazzar arrived, on the night that he had first set eyes upon the papyrus! Somehow, the values of his possessions seemed to have changed, subtly, during his absence. That wall painting, for instance, no longer struck him as a priceless treasure, although he had often thought of it as such. The enamelled casket of Nitocris; the exquisite painted wooden figure of the priestess, Thent-Kheta; even the great inlaid throne of Osorkon from Bubastis--in some queer fashion they had lost colour in his eyes. Almost as the fact dawned upon him, its explanation came, too. As those ancient priests had foreseen, a living testimony to the grandeur of the Pharaohs would outshine all others! The library door opened, although there had been no knock; and Zalithea stole in. John Cumberland jumped up and placed an armchair for her. Jim and Jack were coming on after a theatre, Danbazzar and Aunt Micky having joined them there.