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 robbery of little details that poked forth from tombs and temples brought no true revelation of her stupendous spiritual splendour. Henriot, in his youth, had searched and dived among what material he could find, believing once⁠—or half believing⁠—that the ceremonial of that ancient system veiled a weight of symbol that was reflected from genuine supersensual knowledge. The rituals, now taken literally, and so pityingly explained away, had once been genuine pathways of approach. But never yet, and least of all in his previous visits to Egypt itself, had he discovered one single person, worthy of speech, who caught at his idea. 'Curious,' they said, then turned away⁠—to go on digging in the sand. Sand smothered her world today. Excavators discovered skeletons. Museums everywhere stored them⁠—grinning, literal relics that told nothing.

But now, while he packed and sang, these hopes of enthusiastic younger days stirred again⁠—because the emotion that gave them birth was real and true in him. Through the morning mists upon the Nile an old pyramid bowed hugely at him across London roofs: 'Come,' he heard its awful whisper beneath the ceiling, 'I have things to show you, and to tell.' He saw the flock of them sailing the Desert like weird grey solemn ships that make no earthly port. And he imagined them as one: multiple expressions of some single unearthly portent they adumbrated in mighty form⁠—dead symbols of some spiritual conception long vanished from the world.

'I mustn't dream like this,' he laughed, 'or I shall get absentminded and pack fire-tongs instead of boots. It looks like a jumble sale already!'