But vain were my efforts and resolves. Even while I swore to fly, my steps were still lingering round the pyramid—my eyes still turned towards the secret portal, which severed this enchantress from the world of the living. Hour after hour did I wander through that City of Silence,—till, already, it was noon, and, under the sun’s meridian eye, the mighty pyramid of pyramids stood, like a great spirit, shadowless. Again did those wild and passionate feelings, which had, for a moment, been subdued into reverence by her presence, return to kindle up my imagination and senses. I even reproached myself for the awe, that had held me spell‐bound before her. “What would my companions of the Garden say, did they know that their chief,—he, whose path Love had strewed with trophies—was now pining for a simple Egyptian girl, in whose presence he had not dared to give utterance to a sigh, and who had vanquished the victor, without even knowing her triumph!” A blush came over my cheek at the humiliating thought, and my determination was fixed to await her coming. That she should be an inmate of those gloomy caverns seemed inconceivable; nor did there appear to be any issue from their depths but by the pyramid. Again, therefore, like a sentinel of the dead, did I pace up and down among these tombs, contrasting, in many a mournful reflection, the burning fever within my own veins with the cold quiet of those who slept around. At length the fierce glow of the sun over my head, and, still more, that ever restless agitation in my heart, were too much for even strength like mine to bear. Exhausted, I lay down at the base of the pyramid—placing myself directly under the portal, where, even should slumber surprise me, my heart, if not my ear, might still be on the watch, and her footstep, light as it was, could not fail to awake me. After many an ineffectual struggle against drowsiness, I at length sunk into sleep—but not into forgetfulness. The same image still haunted me, in every variety of shape, with which imagination, assisted by memory, could invest it. Now, like Neïtha, upon her throne at Saïs, she seemed to sit, with the veil just raised from that brow, which mortal had never, till then, beheld,—and now, like the beautiful enchantress Rhodope, I saw her rise out of the pyramid in which she had dwelt for ages,— “Fair Rhodope, as story tells, The bright, unearthly nymph, who dwells Mid sunless gold and jewels hid, The Lady of the Pyramid!” So long, amid that unbroken silence, did my sleep continue, that I found the moon again shining above the horizon, when I awoke. All around was silent and lifeless as before, nor did a print upon the herbage betray that any foot had passed it since my own. Refreshed by rest, and with a fancy still more excited by the mystic wonders of which I had been dreaming, I now resolved to revisit the chapel in the pyramid, and put an end, if possible, to this illusion that haunted me.