of recognition. He belonged to the world of things today. But this woman and himself stood thousands of years away, beneath the columns of a Temple in the sands. And the sands were moving. His feet went shifting with them … running down vistas of ageless memory that woke terror by their sheer immensity of distance.…
Like a muffled voice that called to him through many veils and wrappings, he heard her describe the stupendous Powers that evocation might coax down again among the world of men.
'To what useful end?' he asked at length, amazed at his own temerity, and because he knew instinctively the answer in advance. It rose through these layers of coiling memory in his soul.
'The extension of spiritual knowledge and the widening of life,' she answered. 'The link with the ‘unearthly kingdom' wherein this ancient system went forever searching, would be re-established. Complete rehabilitation might follow. Portions—little portions of these Powers—expressed themselves naturally once in certain animal types, instinctive life that did not deny or reject them. The worship of sacred animals was the relic of a once gigantic system of evocation—not of monsters,' and she smiled sadly, 'but of Powers that were willing and ready to descend when worship summoned them.'
Again, beneath his breath, Henriot heard himself murmur—his own voice startled him as he whispered it: 'Actual bodily shape and outline?'
'Material for bodies is everywhere,' she answered, equally low; 'dust to which we all return; sand, if you prefer it, fine, fine sand. Life moulds it easily enough, when that life is potent.'
A certain confusion spread slowly through his
