John Cumberland’s problem was a legal one. To whom did Zalithea belong? Since she antedated any government of which documentary trace remained, surely not to the authorities at Cairo? The thought that a false step might result in her loss was terrifying. But, if these two found their ideas chaotic, how infinitely more so were those of Barry. At one moment he was raised to a poetic heaven. In the next he found himself plunged in an inferno of such torturing doubts that he longed for the power to run away from himself. Upon the realization of his shadowy ideal, the proof that the unknown might become known, had followed, what? A knowledge that he must either fly from Zalithea or learn to love her--and that she was, to all intents and purposes, a supernatural being! Such were the early reactions of these three to a phenomenon--and a phenomenon in the form of an unusually lovely girl--which struck deep at the roots of human credulity; which forced them to accept the inacceptable, to remain sane though face to face with madness. Danbazzar alone attacked the problem with confidence. A large Bell tent was set up at the lower end of the _wâdi_, and furnished, though simply, in Ancient Egyptian fashion. The necessary materials he had brought with him and Hassan es-Sugra supervised the work. His optimistic foresight had not stopped here. A messenger who had been dispatched to Luxor at dawn returned before midday with an elderly Arab woman. “She has been standing by over a week,” said Danbazzar. “Hassan engaged her. She’s a trained servant and was seven years in the harem of the last Khedive. Remember!” he warned. “Hassan doesn’t know what we found in the sarcophagus! Nobody outside of this party knows. Zalithea is the sick daughter of a friend of mine in El Kasr who has come down for treatment by Professor Blackwell. That’s the story, and we’ve got to stick to it. The sarcophagus was empty.” Accordingly Safîyeh was installed, with her few belongings, in the new tent. A covered litter was extemporized and Hassan dispatched on a mission to Kurna. Danbazzar, following two hours of profound sleep, had become his capable self again. Three visits he had made to the tomb, and reported that Zalithea slumbered soundly. John Cumberland’s anxiety was intense. He had urged the immediate removal of the girl from that nearly unbreathable atmosphere but had been overruled. “We’ll stick to the formula,” said Danbazzar truculently, “with or without your permission. She has to stay there eight hours. After that we have nothing to go upon.” They carried the litter up to the tomb, setting it close to the screen. Professor Blackwell mounted guard at the top of the valley and Barry at the bottom. They wore their ordinary working kit; but John Cumberland and Danbazzar had arranged to put on the Ancient Egyptian dresses under cover of the screen before awakening the sleeper.