vivid in my memory. The sun was dazzlingly bright, and Men-ne-fer—gorgeous Men-ne-fer with its rose-tinted palaces, its temples and gardens and market squares—displayed before our saddened eyes all the splendours of its beauty. The royal palace, on the steps of which the pale pink flamingoes stalked lazily in the heat of the mid-day sun, the broad canal, each side of which the marble palaces rose in a gorgeous line, the market, where gigantic piles of pomegranates threw a brilliant note of vivid orange and red against the blue and the green of water and foliage, and above all the silent and immense judgment hall, with its great marble throne, from whence it seemed to me that I could still hear the harsh, sarcastic laughter of the dead Pharaoh and the screeching of his apes.
Once or twice during that day I saw Hugh's eyes turned with unutterable longing towards the East, beyond the great canal where, in the midst of fuchsia groves, stood that white palace, the terrace with its turquoise blue canopy and its marble floors, on which Sen-tur lazily chased the ibis up and down.
He had made up his mind that he would not see her again…. The parting perhaps would be easier to bear…. There was no doubt that it was all for the best…. She would be happy again when she knew that he had gone away for ever into the land of dreams.
