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His expression was softening. There was that playfulness again, that smile.
"Your temples are in Egypt. They still stand," she said. "The Ramasseum, at Luxor. Abu Simbel. Oh, these aren't the names by which you know them. Your colossal statues! Statues all the world has seen. English poets have written of them. Great generals have journeyed to see them. I've walked past them, laid my hands on them. I've stood in your ancient halls."
He continued to smile. "And now I walk these modern streets with you."
"And it fills you with joy to do it."
"Yes, that is very true. My temples were old before I ever closed my eyes. But the mausoleum of Cleopatra had only just been built." He broke off, letting go her hand. "Ah, it is like yesterday to me, you see. Yet it is dreamlike and distant. Somehow I felt the passage of the centuries as I slept. My spirit grew as I slept."
She thought of the words in her father's translation.
"What did you dream, Ramses?"
"Nothing, my darling dear, that can touch the wonders of this century!" He paused. "When we are weary, we speak lovingly of dreams as if they embodied our true desires--what we would have when that which we do have so sorely disappoints us. But for this wanderer, the concrete world has always been the true object of desire. And weariness came only when the world seemed dreamlike."
He stared off into the driving rain. She let his words sink in, trying in vain perhaps to grasp their full meaning. Her brief life had been marked with just enough pain to make her cherish what she had. The death of her mother years before had made her cleave all the more closely to her father. She had tried to love Alex Savarell because he wanted her to; and her father hadn't minded it. But what she really loved were ideas, and things, just as her father had. Was that what he meant? She wasn't certain.
"You don't want to go back to Egypt, you don't need to see the old world for yourself?" she asked.
"I am torn," he whispered.
A gust of damp wind swept the forlorn pavements; dry leaves scuttered and banked along the high iron fence. There came a dim zinging from the electric wires above, and Ramses turned to look at them.
"Ever more vivid than a dream," he whispered, staring again at the solitary yellow lamp above him. "I want this time, my darling dear
," he said. "You forgive me if I call you this? My darling dear? As you called your friend, Alex."
"You may call me that," she said.
For I love you more than I ever loved him!
He gave her one of those warm, generous smiles. He came to her with his arms out and swept her up off her feet, suddenly.
"Light little Queen," he said.
"Put me down, great King," she whispered.
"And why should I do that?"
"Because I command you to do it."
He obeyed. He set her down gently and gave her a deep bow.
"And now where do we go, my Queen, home to the palace of Stratford, in the region of Mayfair, in the land of London, England, lately known as Britannia?"
"Yes, we do, because I am weary to the bone."
"Yes, and I must study in your father's library, if you permit. I must read the books now to 'put in order,' as you say, the things you've shown me."
Not a sound in the house. Where had the girl gone? The coffee Samir had finally accepted was now quite cold. He could not drink this watery brew. He had not wanted it in the first place.
He had stared fixedly at the mummy case for over an hour, it seemed, the clock chiming twice in the hallway, an occasional pair of headlights piercing the lace curtains and sweeping this high-ceilinged large room, and firing the mummy's gold face with life for an eerie instant.
Suddenly he rose. He could hear the creak of the floor beneath the carpet. He walked slowly towards the case. Lift it. And you will know. Lift it. Imagine. Could it be empty?
He reached out for the gilded wood, his hands poised, trembling.
"I wouldn't do that, sir!"
