So low had been the sound, so immense was the night, so lonely the desert, that Es-siddeeh doubted whether it was not his own heart that had spoken. Then, placing both hands against the breast of the colossus, he cried in a despairing voice, "Is that thy all, O Sphinx?" But there was no answer. With spirit heavy as death, Es-siddeeh wrapped him in his cloak and laid him down to sleep between the paws. "Alas," said he to himself, "how brief, how obscure, and how profitless seem all the answers given to man!" Yet, when the morning came, it occurred to him that, if the Sphinx had indeed spoken, he would do well to ponder the words. So for three moons he sat pondering: "_Scarcely am I changed. 'Tis thou art changed. Look in thy heart: there is my secret._" Those who crossed the desert marked him, sunk in the deepest travail of thought. "Why do you not look at the Sphinx?" they asked. "I begin to know something about it: that is why," he replied. "If I gazed at it always in the present and never in memory I should learn nothing." One day a young scribe of great beauty approached the Sphinx and in a low tone enquired: "_What is the secret of thy smile, O Sphinx?_" "Speak louder. She will not hear you," called his companion. Es-siddeeh leaped to his feet. "Who sent thee hither?" he cried. "Sa-adeh, the Bestower-of-Felicity," answered the youth; and turning to his comrade, "If you wish to know why I do not shout, know that it is because I have read the early work of a certain scribe Es-siddeeh. It is very evident that, as with many persons of original mind, he scarcely recognised the full import of what he was at the time writing. Had he been acquainted with more scholars and had more experience of life he would have spoken with greater certainty. He would have also realised, too, I do not doubt, that his work was not so vain as it then appeared to him. But he disappeared and none knows whither, since his parents never spoke of him again. I, taking up his work, have already carried it further, I think, than he had when he abandoned it. Nevertheless I, too, have ceased to labour at it and am come hither for the purpose thou knowest." "Sa-adeh," echoed Es-siddeeh, waking as if from a dream; "I seem to remember that name. Tell me now, how did you----" But the stranger, receiving no reply from the Sphinx, had departed. Es-siddeeh sat him down again in dejection. That night he did not sleep. The memory of Sa-adeh overcame him with tears. All his life passed in review. Never had his reverie seemed so bitter, his questioning so futile as on that midnight, yet toward dawn he suddenly stood up with a shout. An immeasurable serenity flooded his being. "I have it," he cried; "I have solved the secret of thy smile, O Sphinx!"