THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
of it filled his eyes. The pagan in him trembled and worshiped.
At the first his ears had taken in only silence. But that dwelt high among peaks where his eyes had been fixed. Now he became aware of a sound rising from beneath so hoarse and faint that it made a greater loneliness. He looked down, and realized he was standing, not only the height of the Sphinx, but of the whole rolling plateau behind him. He had not realized how far above the other land this lay; but now he could look down upon the running backs of lesser hills, each outline painted by the moon. Over these he had looked into the great cañon, among these the river wandered and complained; and into these the Sphinx's pedestal descended. Carron could see the slide of the earth and the scattering trees beneath him. To a bird the distance had been no great matter, but for a man still in love with life there must be some other way than the smooth thirty feet of stone. No ledges here, once they were over the ledge of the shoulder; but this itself was broad and stretched out to the left where the Sphinx's neighbor crowded upon her. At a point here the two seemed knitted into one, and from the precipitous back of the one to the easy swell of the other's side was a step. The extraordinary path he was following, with splendors for the
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