She who sleepsAge-adapted version

It began with a storm that seemed to chase the car. Barry Cumberland was driving far too fast through the mountains in his birthday gift, a gleaming Rolls-Royce. The sun disappeared behind a black cloud, and the road twisted like a snake before him. He liked it—the emptiness, the solitude, the feeling of being alone in the world with only the engine and the road.

Just as lightning flashed across the sky, it illuminated a stone house close to the road. High up, a balcony stood outside an open window. There, in the sudden daylight of the lightning, a woman stood perfectly still.

She wore a flowing, light robe and a glittering belt-chain, like he had seen in paintings from ancient times at his father's home. Her long, dark eyes looked straight at him, as if she knew him from before. As if she had been waiting. He managed to say aloud, half to himself: "An Egyptian princess!"

Then the steering wheel jerked in his hands. He heard a screeching sound, a heavy crash, and a blow to his head that plunged everything into darkness.

He awoke in a white room with shiny tiles on the floor. A nurse in a white cap leaned over him. They said he was at Elizabeth Foundation Hospital.

A stranger in a Studebaker had brought him in and even towed his Rolls-Royce to a garage, but had left no name, address, or anything. Nothing was stolen. The man was simply gone. As if he had never been there. For two days Barry was half-lost before his words came back to him.

When he finally sat in the library at home, where every wall bore painted dancers, gods, and priests from the Nile Valley, he told his father everything: the lightning, the woman on the balcony, the crash, the unknown rescuer. His father, John Cumberland, was wealthy and loved ancient Egypt so much that the house was practically a museum.

Barry pointed to a copy of a wall painting from Medinet Habu.

"She could have stepped down from this painting," he said softly. His father thought perhaps it was all a hallucination. But Barry felt the woman was real. He had seen her. She had seen him.

And why had the stranger who saved him hidden himself so carefully? "He acted for her," Barry believed. "She didn't want me to find her." His father couldn't say it was illogical. So Barry decided: He would find that house again.

He took his friend, Jim Sakers, who knew the area, to search. The next day they drove off in clear sun.

But the road where the accident must have happened was now blocked with barricades and signs: roadwork, closed for long. Barry felt something was wrong. The road had been open that evening!

Jim suggested they could hike, but Barry wasn't fully recovered yet. "Not today," he said curtly. They turned back. A few days later, when he felt stronger, Barry went alone. He found the closed road again, slipped through the trees around the barrier, and came out on the other side.

Not a single person was working on the road. A little later he discovered an opening to the left and went in. There, forty meters back, stood a house with high walls around it and a tower on the east wing.

The sight awakened another memory in him that he could not grasp. As if he had seen this house from above once before. When? In a dream?

He walked slowly forward. Near the wall he found a tree stump whose bark had recently been cut. Bushes lay flattened in patches, dying.

He looked up and directly at the window with the little balcony. He had not been mistaken. Dr. Barton at the hospital had joked that Barry must have tried to climb a tree.

There stood the tree. Barry felt his heart pound hard, but the house lay still. All curtains were drawn. Dust lay on the porch.

He rang three times. No one answered. Not even a dog barked.

Had he imagined the girl on the balcony? But who, then, had driven him to the hospital? He walked around to the back. There, under the window where the girl had stood, a door stood ajar.

From the room inside came the clatter of pots. He knocked. The noise stopped abruptly. He knocked again. The door flew open, and a huge woman with wet forearms and an iron jaw stared at him.

"Is anyone home?" Barry asked. "Only me," she replied curtly. He asked about the lady who had witnessed his accident. "Don't know what you're talking about," she said.

"Who owns the house, then?" "John Brown." "Address?" "Don't know." Barry tried politeness, then a little trick.

A ten-shilling note fell almost accidentally from his wallet into his hand. The door slammed with a bang, and he heard a bolt being shot. Barry stood staring at the tree.

"Well, I'll be darned!" He understood two things: This woman was furious and loyal.

And "John Brown" was a lie. No one would learn anything here. Thus the mystery deepened, but at the same time he was surer than before: The girl in the window was real. He had to find out who she was. He traced the ownership through a real estate agent.

Yes, the house was registered in the name of John Brown, but the agent had never met him. There was no Mrs. or Miss Brown. Days passed. Jim made fun of his "princess."

Barry often drove into the hills. One afternoon, while rain clouds drifted by, he stopped at the golf club, at a point that seemed familiar.

The sun broke through a gap in the clouds and shone on a whitewashed house halfway down the slope. The house. Her house.

Just as he had seen it when the lightning struck. He paled. Then something moved in the walled garden. A small, distinct figure, a girl picking flowers. The mist pushed in front of the sun and swallowed her.

Barry revved the engine, raced down the valley road, swerving so fast that two wheels lifted. He jumped up the steps and rang. Silence. Dust on the railing. He went to the side gate.

Barred with rods. Behind, he saw the back door where the housekeeper had stood. Everything quiet.

No clatter of pots, no sound of breathing behind the curtain. Is it true what Father says? he thought. Is it only my mind? Did the accident flip a switch? That evening he was to dine out with Aunt Micky—Countess Colonna, who wore a tuxedo and had steel-gray eyes and a laugh that could frighten a brigadier. With them came Jim and Jack Lorrimer in silver evening dress.

As they drove home after the show, the car stopped for a red light on Fifth Avenue. A French limousine shot past. In the back sat a man and a girl with a strange black veil. The girl lifted the veil, saw their car, and let it fall.

Barry saw her face for a split second.

He screamed, tore open the door, and dashed into the street. It was no use. The plate was unclear, and the limousine vanished. But he knew it. It was the girl from the balcony.

Later he sneaked home to think. He had to know if someone was making fun of him, or if he was going mad. The family doctor had said he should not strain his brain for a year. Suddenly he heard voices in the library. One was his father's.

The other was deep and resonant, like a great church organ. Barry knocked and entered. His father sat before a painting from Medinet Habu.

On the edge of the table beside him sat a man who, in a single moment, filled the room. He wore a white tuxedo with a stiff collar instead of a bow tie.

His hair was silver-gray and smooth back from a handsome forehead; his head was like a lion's head, with a thin mustache and a short, pointed goatee. His face was carved like marble, with a stern, almost Moorish look. He rose; he was taller than most, and his eyes, light brown, had an animal, piercing gaze.

"Barry," said his father. "This is Mr. Danbazzar." The man slowly raised his hand, almost like a priest blessing, and said he was pleased.

There was no quarrel in the room, said his father. Just an offer.

A yes or no. "It concerns Egyptian antiquities," he explained, "but not quite as before."

Danbazzar opened a folder and took out an old, stained papyrus scroll. In the middle of a fragment was a picture of a slender girl drawn with incredible confidence. Barry stiffened. He recognized the face. It could have been the girl on the balcony, or what he saw in the French car.

"This," said Danbazzar, "is from the end of Seti the First's time. The priest who wrote it believed he had found a way to preserve life, not just bodies. Not in any church book has such an offer been made since the days of Ramses the Ninth. A living person could be mummified and still live." Barry protested.

He knew all the stories about "mummy-wheat" that sprouted and died. But Danbazzar continued: The priest had chosen a beautiful captive, a princess called Zalithea, to serve Seti's honor—a living guest for the future. Her sleep would be guarded by priests, and after five generations, within 250 years, the priests confirmed with their seals that the Princess still lived.

"It's unbelievable," said Barry. Danbazzar had also doubted.

Then he had set his best man to search for the tomb. Twelve months ago, the man had found it. Danbazzar had been there last winter, excavated without permission, but stopped by a stone gate that ran in grooves—a portcullis. His money had run out. He needed a backer.

Barry's father, who for years had bought treasures through Danbazzar, leaned forward and asked what it would cost to finish the work. "Two hundred thousand dollars," replied Danbazzar without flinching. "Be ready in fourteen days," said John Cumberland. "Otherwise we'll have to wait until next season." A few evenings later they met at the University Club.

There sat Dr. Rittenburg from the Smithsonian with red cheeks and round glasses, Horace Pain who was always thirsty but matter-of-fact, and Professor Blackwell from Yale, thin as a mast, with a question mark in each eye. They looked at the papyrus. "It's genuine," said Pain. "But the medicine in Berlin has recipes that would make Paderewski bald in two weeks.

One does not mix medicine from such a book." Blackwell nodded: life, as an idea, was what science knew least about. Danbazzar didn't mind the laughter. "That the papyrus is from the time it claims is essential," he said. "The rest can wait."

And the rest was the idea that crept into Barry: that the slender girl on the three-thousand-year-old papyrus, and the girl in New York, might be one and the same secret.

The preparations were not just about ropes and picks. In Danbazzar's rooftop apartment, with a Japanese garden where goldfish darted under flowering vines, chaos reigned. An expensive sarcophagus had become a bar. "Ever seen such?" whispered his father. Barry hadn't. They laughed a little, but when Danbazzar brought out another document and let the light glide over the ancient script, the air grew serious. He said that the very formula that made life rest and awaken was in his vault, along with photographs of the papyrus. The original scrolls, he said calmly, were safely locked in a New York bank.

Not long after, Barry stood on the deck of a ship in the night-dark sea.

Aunt Micky had given him a dazzling white pith helmet and admonitions: "Brush your teeth with Vichy water. All other water is poison." Jim had shouted from the dock with a funnel as a megaphone: "Don't forget the bottle of The Unchanging Desert! I am a free, brave Arab!" Barry smiled for the first time in days.

Cairo was supposed to be chaotic, people said. From the balcony of Shepheard's Hotel he saw shouting sellers of fly whisks, yellow slippers, and "scarabs" that glittered in brass. It was the cars he looked for: sometimes, behind curtains in a car, he sensed kohl-dark eyes. He always leaned forward then, in a hope he dared not fully bring to thought.

When an arabiyeh stopped and Danbazzar stepped out in white suit with tight boots and wide felt hat, the man seemed more Oriental than most in the street. Behind him came a slender Egyptian in black robes and white turban, with small, fine features and eyes like a gazelle. "This is our chief of staff, Hassan es-Sugra," said Danbazzar. "What I do not know about the Valley of the Kings, Hassan knows."

In Luxor the Nile was so high that the feet of statues stood in water. The Winter Palace was half empty. Barry and Hassan walked toward Karnak in moonlight. The palm trees were cut in charcoal against the sky, the stars fixed like nails.

Barry felt a violent, glad restlessness and hurried, but Hassan said softly: "Sir, there is no reason to hurry. It is hot." Barry laughed a little and calmed down.

"The gentlemen from America are always in such a hurry," Hassan continued mildly. "But there is so much time, and life in Egypt is beautiful for those who will rest and enjoy it." He pointed with his black stick at an inscription in the stone, and read slowly: "I did the best I could for the temple of Amun. I erected obelisks that reached to the world of heaven..." "Who wrote that?" asked Barry. "The first prophet of Amun, in the reign of Ramses the Second, son of Seti the First." Hassan had pointed out the spot. A half-hidden niche in a stone wall far north of the Valley of the Queens.

Above a bumpy heap of sand and debris sat the sign, deeply carved: a peculiar oval and the signs that meant: "She who sleeps but shall awaken."

Danbazzar had made a camouflage that was almost magical: a large, sloping piece of wood and sailcloth painted and strewn with wet sand, wedged into the cliff as if it were rock. Behind this they could work day and night. Two men always stood watch on the heights, one by the caravan road and one down in the gorge. "Rain is worst," said Danbazzar contentedly, looking at his work like an artist.

They knew someone was watching.

One day Mr. Ahmed Tawwab, a handsome and eager official of the authorities, rode into the valley and looked around as if he were walking on Bond Street. "The Mudir sends a warning," he said politely. "Hawwara Arabs have been seen from El Kharga.

They are on their way and will cause trouble." Danbazzar smiled and thanked him. When Tawwab was gone, he said lowly: "That means the screen went up in the nick of time. We will be watched. Sooner or later we will be invited to pay."

They opened a small crack just below the sign. The shaft slanted inward. Downward there were traces of a heavy stone gate in the ceiling that had fallen and shattered. Hassan crawled first.

The air was thinner, but not dangerous. Further down, he saw a cross-chamber that had been walled up with stone block and sealed with plaster. An opening between the blocks was big enough to see through. "A chamber," Hassan breathed. "And a sarcophagus."

Barry came running one night, crouching through the shadows and sneaking so as not to be seen from the back of the mountain. He had almost forgotten to knock three times to warn the guards; luckily he remembered in time. Once he heard small blows deep inside the mountain. Another time he heard a distant, strange sound from a side canyon: like a luminous breath, a small lamp in the darkness. His heart leaped. He retreated between two low ridges of earth to wait, completely still, holding his breath.

A tall, thin man appeared over the edge. Moonlight fell on him, making him narrow and eerie. Barry tensed. The man moved his hand to his hip. Barry sprang forward. "It's me!"

He was ashamed of his relief when the gaunt figure turned out to be Danbazzar himself. "We are both nervous," said Danbazzar, laughing dryly. "I thought someone was spying on me down there." "Me too," said Barry. "Saw a tall, thin..."

"Like an undressed mummy," finished Danbazzar, lighting a cigarette. Each evening the tension grew. Professor Blackwell stood guard first, holding a Lee-Enfield and a cigar in the corner of his mouth. "All clear!" he shouted into the opening, and the echo rushed past like spirits.

The breakthrough came even though everything was eerie. They had drilled through a weakness in the rock beside the first gate.

They crawled through, with scraping elbows, past what must have been the remains of another stone gate. Below was a small square chamber, and further, behind a barrier of mortared stones, they glimpsed a large rosy coffin. "We are in the tomb," whispered Barry.

"She is in there." It was a mix of transgression and laughter that drove them. They bought themselves time when Tawwab returned: He got a check, ten thousand piasters for the first week. He explained, smiling, that next week would be twice as expensive, and the third twice that again. Professor Blackwell quickly calculated: "Five hundred dollars, a thousand, two thousand...

In three months we'll need Rockefeller." "We would have," muttered Danbazzar, "if we paid it all. But we'll try not to." The tools to lift the heavy lid came from a store in Luxor: jacks from Birmingham, ropes, supports, braces. Danbazzar forbade anyone from moving abruptly.

"If we drop half a ton of granite onto a tightly sealed coffin underneath, the one lying in it could die from the shock," he said. Barry regretted having coughed that they were making too much fuss. By sunset everything was ready. The air in the chamber was thick and hot, the paintings on the walls seemed to breathe.

A gold bowl on a low table, small flasks with something that almost smelled of old honey, thin lamps, and a long, low bench with leopard feet.

"These are not ordinary grave goods," said Danbazzar excitedly. "They are ingredients in the formula." The professor reached for a bottle. "Don't touch!" said Barry's father.

"It's crumbling!" Danbazzar nodded: "One of the oils comes from Persia. It has already begun to change color. Some substances are perishable."

He said, with a hint of triumph, that he had obtained a rare mammal ingredient from Russia.

"Was there a Russian colony in Egyptian times?" asked the professor ironically.

Danbazzar did not smile. At midnight they raised the granite lid a few inches. Beneath was an inner coffin of wood, richly gilded and painted, with a lid shaped like a female figure in a thin gown, hands folded around a lotus, with ankh signs at the head and feet.

Barry felt the blood drain from his face. He had to lean against the wall to keep from fainting. It was her—not just a representation. It was her. That night they kept watch themselves.

First Barry and his father stood at each end of the gorge. Barry suddenly felt ridiculous. Here stood two distinguished Americans guarding a tomb belonging to Egypt's museum, as if they owned a mound in Central Park.

He thought of the girl, of her face, of all the strange moments when he had "seen" her before. He decided: They were not desecrating the dead.

They were continuing an attempt that the priests themselves had begun, so that the future might hear Seti's story from one who had seen it. He was almost calm when a sound came from the dark cave down the side. Not words, just tones. It was a woman's voice. It was far away, but so unmistakably human that Barry froze from head to toe.

He grabbed his rifle. He dared not move or shout. He stood in the silence and endured.

Finally he heard three clapping sounds. Danbazzar and his father were coming down again.

"All clear?" called Danbazzar. "All clear," answered Barry. "Except I heard something strange. A woman's voice.

Down there." He pointed toward the hollow valley where he had earlier seen a tall, thin figure. John and Danbazzar quickly looked at each other. "Maybe a night heron," suggested Danbazzar. "No," said Barry.

"It was a woman." At dawn came the hour none of them truly believed would come. In the chamber seven small lamps burned. The smoke of Kyphi, an ancient incense, hung sweet and thick. Danbazzar commanded silence.

They wore turbans and sandals and simple light robes, all so that the one lying there would not scream herself mad with fright at the sight of strangers in modern clothes.

Barry lit the lamps in the order he had been taught, and stayed close to the wall. When the scissors cut and the wood gave way, he felt his hair stand on end.

Danbazzar lifted her gently and placed her on the gilded bench. She was wrapped in saffron-colored strips, her face hidden by a thin gold mask. The scissors snipped in small, clear cuts. The sheet fell aside.

Two slender arms, one shoulder, white and smooth as ivory, came into the lamplight. Danbazzar carefully lifted the mask. A mass of dark, short, wavy hair slipped free. The face was as if carved from pale mother-of-pearl: a fine nose, soft lips, long black lashes on rounded cheeks.

Barry heard himself shout loudly and ugly: "My God!" He looked straight into Danbazzar's eyes, which now glowed wildly like an animal's. Barry only realized later that it was his own voice. Danbazzar did the rest almost coldly. He blew the fragrance over her mouth.

Professor Blackwell stumbled out to Barry, pale as wax. "I... cannot," he stammered. "If she lives, it shatters the cornerstone of my entire life. If she does not live, why then..."

Outside, he drank a swig of whiskey and looked at Barry with watery eyes. "I saw her breathe." Barry ran back in.

Father and Danbazzar were leaning over her. She was breathing calmly. Danbazzar gave her a sip of wine mixed with powder. She moved her lips lightly, and for a moment she smiled gently up at Barry like a sleepy little child. Then she closed her eyes. "Now she sleeps ordinary sleep," whispered Danbazzar, extinguishing the lamps. "She should awaken in eight or nine hours and... continue life."

He started a little, gripped Barry's arm. "Take me out." Then followed hours where everything was reversed: A three-thousand-year-old girl breathes, and the men who had believed in numbers and tests and medical textbooks had to sit down and breathe themselves. Professor Blackwell felt rhythm, breath, temperature. "Normal," he said, and sighed hollowly.

"Her nails were manicured yesterday." "Circa 1360 BC," said Danbazzar, not without triumph. A small scar at the right temple indicated ancient surgery. "She laughed at me twice," the professor admitted at last, looking flustered.

They needed a plan. Danbazzar set up a large light-tent further down the gorge. An old servant woman, Safîyeh, had been brought in a few days earlier. She took care of "the sick daughter of a friend from El Kasr," as they told everyone.

That night, Danbazzar himself, in light robes and sandals, carried the girl out of the tomb and into cover behind the screen. No one else was to show themselves to her. Before first light. Before blood-red birds flew over the ridge. The professor stood guard.

Barry stood far below. He walked and thought and was overjoyed and suddenly had very simple worries: What would she eat? Could she walk? Would she have nightmares? Would her heart—perhaps older than

Noah—suddenly give up? The professor shrugged. "I can only see. I cannot explain."

What followed changed everything between Barry and her. At first she was afraid. When she realized, with Danbazzar's simple words, that she had slept for a very, very long time, and that Thebes was gone, she began to laugh a little, and even to joke. She was restless as a child and proud as a queen.

Danbazzar did not like that she laughed at him. But she did everything Barry asked. Once she became angry because they came to her without the white robes.

"Disgrace," her look said. When Barry, as if a lost ancestor rose up in him, knelt and bowed his head to her, she melted at once. She said his name for the first time: "Bahree," and stroked his hair lightly as a forgiveness.

They started English lessons in the same breath. He pointed at her eyelid: "Eye." She touched his ear: "Ear." He laughed. They lost track of time.

When one day Mr. Tawwab's oily voice could be heard just outside, Barry was sent to her tent to make her lie still and be quiet. She promised. But as Tawwab passed outside and boasted that he wanted to see "the kitchen," she grabbed a peach from a bowl and threw it.

The fruit hit the back of his head so that his tarbush flew off. He turned, bewildered and furious. "Say it was the kitchen boy! Shout!" hissed Danbazzar, storming into the tent and making such a fuss that everyone thought poor Said had been beaten.

The peach trick became a secret joke between Barry and her. The tomb was emptied of what they wanted to document. The screen wall was carefully put back in place; new layers of sand and paint made everything as before. The workers from the village were well paid and sent home. Then the girl was taken across the river to a hotel in Luxor, fully prepared as a veiled Muslim lady.

No one was allowed to see her face. She grew fond of the balcony overlooking the Nile, of the sounds of the reed flute in the evening and the honks of cars she wanted to try at once. Large crates of dresses came from Cairo. One evening she called from her room: "Bahree!" She stood in the doorway in a dancing gown that revealed more of her cream-white skin than Barry had seen since they removed the wrappings.

He thought she was the most beautiful in the world. She was silly happy. He looked at her for a while before he understood what was missing. She had forgotten stockings.

She stood barefoot in the new shoes.

And she said, proud of having learned correctly: "Zal'ith-eeah! You are a-dor-able!" The journey continued, and fights over who was in charge followed. Mrs. Uffington, the notorious "lion huntress" who collected celebrities like others collect stamps, suddenly appeared in Luxor.

She slapped John Cumberland on the arm and declared she "just had to say how-d'ye-do!" and that the girl was "lovely." The princess replied by looking at her through long eyelashes and saying a word to Barry in the old tongue, a word she whispered as if it burned: "Hafee." "Snake," translated Barry.

This woman was not to steal Zalithea into the little stings of newspapers. At a diplomatic party in New York, later, she made it simple: When Mrs. Uffington came floating with open arms, Zalithea said "Bahree" the way she said it when she wished to leave, turned and glided out of the room, through the door and out of the building into the winter air. No one saw her again that evening.

On the steamer westward, when Manhattan was a smudge of blue steel on the horizon, Barry stood with her up in the wind. The color in her cheeks deepened, and suddenly large tears rolled down.

"Zalithea!

Dearest! What is it?" whispered Barry. She blinked, shy. "Sorree," she said, and placed her hand in his.

Hassan es-Sugra had said goodbye in Luxor and said something that lingered in Barry like a chime: "One day you will return. Some of your friends will not then be your friends. If one day she tells you why her heart is sad, do not be angry with her. She is not of Egypt."

Barry tried to look forward. But inside her eyes, behind all that was new, dwelt something old that he did not understand, and that had no place in New York. At home, the whole city went mad. Headlines with "Harem beauty brought on Berengaria!" and "Cumberland Cleopatra here!"

Everyone wanted to see "the princess." She refused everything. She sat on the Bubastis throne her father had bought—a carved masterpiece—as if it were made for her, and learned small words and phrases in her twisted way. Danbazzar came often; he was the only one who could truly speak with her in the old language. Jack Lorrimer was dazzling in ball gowns, but only got a small smile.

Jim Sakers, with peacock tones and jokes, was told via Danbazzar: "You talk too much."

Barry laughed. In the library, under the paintings of sacred processions, everything had changed. Her father, who used to love every statue's shadow, became quiet when she entered. He loved her as a scholar loves the only living witness to something he has spent his life understanding—and as an old man loves a child he must protect.

Barry loved her in a different way and struggled silently with one thought that would not let go: Had they met before? Not in New Jersey or on Fifth Avenue.

But… before. Then things went wrong.

It did not happen with shouts, but with whispers, with silent steps. Aunt Micky saw through their stories, asked outright: "When is Zalithea going home? Is she an adopted child? And where does Danbazzar fit in? You are all lying!" Barry could not explain. That night he went into the library to fetch a book, he heard a silly laugh and her voice, "Bahree!" He threw open the door. Monty

Edwards, a moneyed fool Barry hated, held her fast, bent her backward and tried to steal a kiss he had no right to. "Out," Barry said in a voice that was not his own. Edwards left, white with rage, without a word.

The door slammed. Zalithea stood breathing fast. Her eyes sought him, as if he were the only safe thing in the new land.

Barry felt his whole life shift. He took her in, tight and warm, and kissed her like a man finally saying what he had held back too long. He kissed her forehead, her hair, her eyelids, and the soft hollow of her throat.

When he let go, she looked at him with a long, deep gaze. She turned away and quietly ran out of the room. Somewhere upstairs a door closed, soundlessly.

It was his last hour with her.

The next morning, his father stormed into the bedroom. "Barry! Zalithea is gone!"

The guard outside had seen her and Safîyeh leave at half past five. They never came back.

A search began. No result. Private detectives, police, rewards for tips. Nothing new.

At last, when the city could no longer bear not knowing, they sent a message to the press. Danbazzar wrote a short biography—entirely fabricated: "Lady Zalithea el-Aziza ed-Dhahir, daughter of Sheikh Mohammed Abd el-Ghuri..."

"This will reach Egypt," Danbazzar said. "And the sheikh, if he exists, will say he never had a daughter." It was hopeless. Then one morning, amid a pile of letters from strangers who "had seen her in Marseille," a small, hard ring fell out of an envelope without a stamp. A lapis lazuli ring that Barry had bought for her in Paris, on the Rue de la Paix.

His heart sank. Inside the letter was a sheet with writing that looked like insect feet over sand. Hieratic. His father called in Dr.

Rittenburg.

After switching to larger glasses, he read softly: "Because I can no longer be with you, I send the ring. So shall you know. Do not grieve. Do not search far. Forget.

There is nothing more. I leave my heart behind. Zalithea." Barry did not stop searching anyway. His father and Professor Blackwell had dinner with Jim and said what was true: Barry was on the verge of a breakdown.

A journey could save him. Jim was the friend who could pull him out of the darkness and watch over him.

Ten days later they set out. London helped a little. Paris made everything worse.

One morning at a sidewalk café, Barry suddenly turned chalk white. He stared at a perfumery across the street. "I saw her," he whispered. "She went in there." Jim managed to smile. "You're dreaming in broad daylight, old friend." The shop door opened. A slender girl came out with a small package. Jim saw what Barry saw: the walk, the profile. "Wait here," he said, and followed.

She crossed the street, quick but not hurried, like someone who had always walked there. Jim kept his distance. She rounded a corner and entered a discreet hotel.

He followed into the lobby. She spoke to the receptionist. English, perfect. "Has any American mail arrived?" "Not yet, miss."

Jim turned to avoid being stared at as a gawker. She turned too. They suddenly stood face to face. "Princess!" escaped him.

She trembled, almost dropping the package. Then she straightened and said coldly, "You are mistaken. I am no princess. I do not know you." Jim tossed his business card on the counter and mumbled an apology he did not remember later.

The receptionist said the lady was Miss Marguerite Devina from New Jersey, and that she was expecting relatives. Barry changed hotels the same afternoon. He wrote a brief note saying that the name Devina reminded him that his parents had been friends with Madame Devina, a soprano at the Metropolitan Opera. Could Miss Devina be related? A reply came: She would meet him in the lounge at four o'clock.

Barry could not remember a single thing he said to her over tea. He only remembered her eyes. "Devina was my mother," she said lightly. "She died in Paris when I was a baby." They spoke carefully.

He asked about the accident in New Jersey. "I'm fascinated by lightning," she said, letting the sugar sprinkle into the cup. "You must have wondered why we acted so strangely afterward. But my—my guardian and I were about to sail. Couldn't get involved."

"Mr. Brown?" Barry asked. "Oh no," she replied. "Mr.

Brown was just the driver. We hired him." She held her gaze unruffled. He asked why she was dressed so oddly that night on the balcony. "I was trying on a masquerade costume," she answered directly.

"Two sugar cubes?" "One." He stared at her slender hands, the gestures he recognized. He mentioned the singer Thais. "The critics said she didn't just sing Thaïs.

She was Thaïs." Barry asked about her father. A shadow crossed her face. "He destroyed her. In every sense of the word.

She would have died in a poorhouse if Paul Ahmes hadn't…" "Who?" Barry asked softly. "The best man in the world," she said suddenly with fire.

"She only brought him sorrow.

Yet he spent everything he had to save her." That evening, she disappeared. An envelope awaited Barry when he returned to his room. He recognized the handwriting. Marguerite explained everything—all they had never intended to tell.

It began when she was a baby. Paul Ahmes had left the stage, quit as a magician and Egyptian illusionist, to care for her mother, who was ill and ruined by a man she once almost married.

Ahmes loved everything Egyptian more than himself. He bought up ancient artifacts with every penny he earned, knowing more about them than most dealers in Europe. Most of what he used on stage was real.

When her mother read that a ring belonging to the real Thaïs was to be auctioned in London, she wanted it back. She had been forced to sell it when she was poor. Ahmes traveled to buy the ring to make her happy. He did not bid himself, for the auction house knew him. He sent a man.

John Cumberland was also in the room. When Ahmes wrote to Cumberland explaining without mentioning her mother's name, Cumberland did not believe him.

Her mother died the evening after Ahmes returned. Afterwards, Ahmes and little Marguerite moved to America. He took other names, became "Danbazzar" to the world.

He dealt in antiquities, but kept the most beautiful and sold only copies or repaired originals. "Some of the famous museums in the world have things he made or repaired," she wrote. "He never sold anything he loved. He would rather make something that looked like it for those who would pay to own a legend." And one day, he came upon a tomb in a side gully in the west, through an old robber passage.

A huge stone coffin stood there. He pried open the lid with jacks and wedges.

The coffin was empty. He also realized that the old robbers had broken the lower gate and the chamber door long ago. He closed everything again, the sand and dust hiding the opening.

He also concealed the entrance from above, the one leading into the space between the first and second stone gates. He waited. Planned. "He said one day," she wrote, "that he would sell me to John Cumberland. 'Play your cards right, you'll marry a millionaire,' he laughed.

I was completely under his power, and I agreed. We rented the house in New Jersey through Mr. Brown, who had been his stage manager. His wife cooked.

None of the old troupe left him.

I lived like a nun, always veiled when I went out. He taught me Coptic, the ancient language. I knew Arabic from my nurse, Safîyeh. A year before the papyrus was shown to your father, he went to Egypt. He put up the screen you found.

Our man, Hassan es-Sugra, had tracked down the real entrance via the cartouche. He opened only as far as the first stone gate, saw it was there, and closed it again. He himself carved the sign 'She who sleeps but shall awaken' into the rock outside. Through the second tunnel, from above, he took down lifting equipment and hoisted up the granite lid.

He placed a painted wooden sarcophagus we had made in New Jersey and sent by sea.

He set lamps, bowls, and benches in place—some real, some made by his own hands. He blocked the door and walled up the passage from above. Everything was ready for his final and greatest illusion." The papyrus? The formula?

"We spent two years on them," it said. "It was his greatest work. The material had cost him countless studies. No one else could have written it in a way that made Herr Pain and Dr. Rittenburg accept it.

I was proud of him. Until you. It never occurred to me to doubt his way of living."

That evening Barry crashed right outside the house in New Jersey, they thought all was lost. But Ahmes was at his best when the alarm went off.

He got everyone out. Only Mrs. Brown stayed behind to clean up. Marguerite was hidden in his apartment in New York. "I almost ruined everything when I went back to the garden to pick flowers.

That was the day you came again." When all was ready, Safîyeh and a tall, thin man named Omar went to Egypt ahead of her. Marguerite sailed herself on the same ship as Professor Blackwell, but stayed in her cabin the whole way not to be seen.

She lay hidden in Luxor until the night before. That night they carried her across the desert.

Barry heard her when she stumbled in the hollow valley. Omar lit a small lamp. "You thought he looked like a mummy," she wrote. "That was Omar." In a ruin there, Safîyeh dressed her in veils and bandages.

She was laid down in the wooden sarcophagus while jacks held the granite lid up. When Barry returned at eight o'clock, she was already inside. She had air through a thin mask and tiny holes. "I was afraid. But I had trained for months.

I will never forget the relief when you helped loosen the bandages."

She had been taught to hate the Cumberland name. But that evening Barry knelt and whispered, "Forgive me, I didn't mean to hurt you," all hatred shattered. "We didn't know how to end it," she wrote. "You ended it for us.

The evening with Edwards. While you slept in the library afterward, I left. Safîyeh took the morning train to Montreal and sailed. I went to Paris. Ahmes wrote in hieratic, for your sake.

I was not to see you again. But then Jim came and spoke to me at the hotel, and then I knew you were here. I had to at least tell the truth. You see—I love you."

Barry read the letter with his hands clutching the paper.

He went straight out into the rain as thunderclouds gathered over the city. He had one thought: find her. He searched all week. He was pointed at and laughed at. He was stopped by an old gentleman who threatened seconds.

On the last day, before the storm broke, he stood under a tree and looked across at a white-painted house behind low acacias. A window went up in a flash of light. On a green-painted balcony she stood. She caught her breath and smiled, half afraid, half happy. Barry shouted and ran across the road, through the gate, up the gravel, rang and knocked.

The door opened slowly. Safîyeh stood there, smiled and stepped aside. "Come in." The air in the hall smelled faintly of aloes and myrrh. By a small red granite fireplace, pieced together from old fragments, a tall man leaned. He had his shirt sleeves rolled up.

He took the cigar out of his mouth, bowed slightly, and carried himself with regal poise. "Danbazzar!" Barry said aloud. "Paul Ahmes, at your service," the man replied quietly. "Sit down, my boy.

Let's talk." The conversation was shortest when it was most difficult. Ahmes said he had quit. "Zalithea was my last deal," he said, without a glint in his eye. He said he regretted it.

Not everything—he could not regret his love for Egypt. But he regretted judging John Cumberland as a man who deserved to be tricked. "He is pure white through and through," said Ahmes. "If you want to tell him, I can give a list of everything that isn't right.

He can buy it back.

But he will be happier if he doesn't have to know." He said the rest could be sorted out among the young. He walked out, stiff and calm as always. Barry stood alone among small god statues and enameled necklaces, thinking about everything that was a lie and everything that was true. He heard a curtain move. She stood there, quiet, looking at him as she had that evening when she came to the library door and stopped. He did not approach; he did not want to frighten her. She came.

He whispered: "My dear." He put his arms around her, gently and firmly, and kissed her so long that time disappeared. Thus ended the strange journey from a lightning strike over a house in New Jersey to a dusty valley in Egypt and back to a balcony in the rain.

Some things remained a secret, for some people's peace. The father would know what he could bear. Barry and Marguerite knew the rest.

They knew about the screen wall in the mountain wall, about the signaling code and police whistle, about jacks from Birmingham and a smuggler's shoulder at midnight, about "Hafee" whispered through the teeth and a peach that knocked a fez off a head, about seven lamps and an ancient scent in a stifling chamber, about a face pale as a shell that opened its eyes and smiled. They knew that sometimes a heart can be young even when the story around it is three thousand years old. They knew that it is not always the truth about things that makes a life. Sometimes it is who you choose to bear it with.

And far away, in the shadow of columns, like an echo, a gentle voice sounded that had once said to an impatient American under a moon in Karnak: "What is there to hurry for? All that life has to give is ours tonight." Hassan es-Sugra had been right.

There was no longer any rush.