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 'is simply what we are trying to remember. Knowledge is memory.' She paused a moment watching his face closely. 'At least, you are free from that cheap scepticism which labels these old beliefs as superstition.' It was not even a question.

'I⁠—worship real belief⁠—of any kind,' he stammered, for her words and the close proximity of her atmosphere caused a strange upheaval in his heart that he could not account for. He faltered in his speech. 'It is the most vital quality in life⁠—rarer than deity.' He was using her own phrases even. 'It is creative. It constructs the world anew⁠'

'And may reconstruct the old.'

She said it, lifting her face above him a little, so that her eyes looked down into his own. It grew big and somehow masculine. It was the face of a priest, spiritual power in it. Where, oh where in the echoing Past had he known this woman's soul? He saw her in another setting, a forest of columns dim about her, towering above giant aisles. Again he felt the Desert had come close. Into this tent-like hall of the hotel came the sifting of tiny sand. It heaped softly about the very furniture against his feet, blocking the exits of door and window. It shrouded the little present. The wind that brought it stirred a veil that had hung for ages motionless.⁠ ⁠…

She had been saying many things that he had missed while his mind went searching. 'There were types of life the Atlantean system knew it might revive⁠—life unmanifested today in any bodily form,' was the sentence he caught with his return to the actual present.

'A type of life?' he whispered, looking about