home after their little sojourn in Egypt, so happy to have seen the pyramids, the 
temples. Destroy the elixir. Every drop of it.
  
  She stared down into the turbulent sea. The wind suddenly ripped at her hair, at the 
edges of the shawl. She gripped the railing, and the shawl was lifted off her shoulders 
and blown away, rolling into a ball as it was carried up and out into the dark.
  
  The mist swallowed it. She never saw it hit the water. And the sound of the wind and 
the sound of the engines merged suddenly, and seemed to be of the same fabric as the mist.
  
  Her world, gone. Her world of faded colors and dim noises, gone. She heard his voice 
speaking to her, "I love you, Julie Stratford."  She heard herself say, "I wish I'd never 
laid eyes on you. That you had let Henry do his work."
  
  She smiled suddenly. Had she ever been this cold in her life? She looked down. She was 
wearing only a thin nightgown. No wonder. And the truth was, she ought to be dead now. 
Dead like her father. Henry had put the poison in her cup. She closed her eyes, turning 
her face this way and that in the wash of the wind.
  
  "I love you, Julie Stratford,"  his voice came again in memory, and this time she heard 
herself answer with the old cliche" , so beautiful." I shall love you till my dying day."
  
  It was no use going home. It was no use, any of it. The motions of living. The 
adventure had ended. The nightmare had ended. And now the normal world would be the 
nightmare, unless she was with her father, or alone sealed off from all reality, her last 
thoughts only of all the glorious moments that had been.
  
  In the tent with him, making love to him, his at last. In the temple under the stars.
  
  She would tell no children in old age why she had never married. She would tell no 
young man the story of the voyage to Cairo. She would not be that woman, harbouring all 
her life a terrible knowledge, a terrible regret.
  
  But this was too harsh, all of this. No need for such literal thoughts. The dark waters 
waited. She'd be carried far, faraway from the ship within moments;- there would be no 
chance of salvation. And that seemed to her to be inexpressibly beautiful suddenly. She 
had only to climb up, which she did now, and let herself go into the cold wind.
  
  Why, the wind would even carry her partway. It had caught her gown and was blowing it 
out behind her. She stretched out her arms and pitched herself forward. It seemed the 
wind grew louder and she was flying out towards the water. It was done!
  
  In one split second she knew that nothing could save her, nothing could possibly 
intervene; she was already falling, and she wanted to say her father's name. But it was 
Ramses' name that came to her mind. Ah, the sweetness of it, the utter sweetness of all 
of it.
  
  Then two strong arms caught her. She hung suspended above the sea, stunned, groping to 
see through the mist.
  
  "No, Julie."  It was Ramses pleading with her. Ramses who lifted her over the railing 
and held her tightly in his arms. Ramses standing on the deck with her in his arms." Not 
death over life, Julie, no."
  
  In a torrent the sobs broke from her; like ice she shattered, the warm tears spilling 
down her face as she hugged him and buried her face against his chest.
  
  She said his name over and over. She felt his arms closing her off from the searing 
wind.
  
  Cairo woke with the sun. The heat seemed to rise from the dirt streets themselves as 
the bazaar came to life, as the striped awnings fell down over doorways, as the sounds of 
camels and donkeys rose.
  
  Elliott was thoroughly tired now. He couldn't resist sleep much longer, but still he 
walked. Sluggishly he moved past the brass merchants and the rug merchants, and the 
sellers of gellebiyyas and of fake antiquities-cheap Egyptian "treasures"  for a few 
pence. The sellers of mummies, who claimed now to offer for a pittance the bodies of 
Kings.
  
  Mummies. They stood along the whitewashed wall in the burning sunlight; mummies, 
soiled, worn, in their bedraggled wrappings, yet the features of their faces 
distinguishable beneath the layers of linen and grime.
  
  He stopped. AH the thoughts with which he'd wrestled the night long seemed to leave 
him. The images of those he loved which had been so close to him suddenly faded. He was 
in the bazaar; the sun was burning down on him; he was looking at a row of dead bodies 
against a wall.
  
  Malenka's words came back to him.
  
  "They make a great Pharaoh of my English. My beautiful English. They put him in the 
bitumen; they make a mummy of him for tourists to buy... My beautiful English, they wrap 
him in linen; they make him a King."
  
  He moved closer; irresistibly drawn by what he saw, though it repelled him completely. 
He felt the first wave of nausea strike him as his eyes locked on the first mummy, the 
tallest and leanest, propped at the near end of the wall. Then the second wave came as 
the merchant stepped forward, belly preceding him beneath his striped cotton robes, hands 
clasped behind his back.
  
  "Allow me to offer you a great bargain!"  said the merchant." This one here is not like 
the others. See? If you look you can see the fine bones of this one, for he was a great 
King. Come! Come closer. Have a good look at him."
  
  Slowly Elliott obeyed. The wrappings were thick, moldering, as ancient in appearance as 
any he had ever seen! And the smell rising from them, the rotting, stinking smell of 
earth and bitumen; but there, beneath that thick veneer, he could see the face; see the 
nose and the broad plain of the forehead, see clearly the sunken eyes, the thin mouth! He 
was staring at the face of Henry Stratford, and there was no doubt.