“I don’t mind so long as you do it,” I said, and we walked on for some time in silence.
“Isn’t it odd,” she said presently, “how our talk always seems to come back to my uncle? Oh, and that reminds me that the things he gave to the Museum are in the same room as the Ahkhenaten relief. Would you like to see them?”
“Of course I should.”
“Then we will go and look at them first.” She paused, and then, rather shyly and with a rising color, she continued: “And I think I should like to introduce you to a very dear friend of mine—with your permission, of course.”
This last addition she made hastily, seeing, I suppose, that I looked rather glum at the suggestion. Inwardly I consigned her friend to the devil, especially if of the masculine gender; outwardly I expressed my felicity at making the acquaintance of any person whom she should honor with her friendship. Whereat, to my discomfiture, she laughed enigmatically; a very soft laugh, low-pitched and musical, like the cooing of a glorified pigeon.
I strolled on by her side, speculating a little anxiously on the coming introduction. Was I being conducted to the lair of one of the savants attached to the establishment? and would he add a superfluous third to our little party of two, so complete and companionable, solus cum sola, in this populated wilderness? Above all, would he turn out to be a young man, and bring my aerial castles tumbling about my ears? The shy look and the blush with which she had suggested the introduction were ominous indications, upon which I mused gloomily as we ascended the stairs and passed through the wide doorway. I glanced apprehensively at my companion, and met a quiet, inscrutable smile; and at that moment she halted opposite a wall-case and faced me.
“This is my friend,” she said. “Let me present you to Artemidorus, late of the Fayyum. Oh, don’t smile!” she pleaded. “I am quite serious. Have you never heard of pious Catholics who cherish a devotion to some long-departed saint? That is my feeling toward Artemidorus, and if you only knew what comfort he has shed into the heart of a lonely woman; what a quiet, unobtrusive friend he has been to me in my solitary, friendless days, always ready with a kindly greeting on his gentle, thoughtful face, you would like him for that alone. And I want you to like him and to share our silent friendship. Am I very silly, very sentimental?”
A wave of relief swept over me, and the mercury of my emotional thermometer, which had shrunk almost into the bulb, leaped up to summer heat. How charming it was of her and how sweetly intimate, to wish to share this mystical friendship with me! And what a pretty conceit it was, too, and how like this strange, inscrutable maiden, to come here and hold silent converse with this long-departed Greek. And the pathos of it all touched me deeply amidst the joy of this newborn intimacy.
“Are you scornful?” she asked, with a shade of disappointment, as I made no reply.
“No, indeed I am not,” I answered earnestly. “I want to make you aware of my sympathy and my appreciation without offending you by seeming to exaggerate, and I don’t know how to express it.”
“Oh, never mind about the expression, so long as you feel it. I thought you would understand,” and she gave me a smile that made me tingle to my fingertips.
We stood awhile gazing in silence at the mummy—for such, indeed, was her friend Artemidorus. But not an ordinary mummy. Egyptian in form, it was entirely Greek in feeling; and brightly colored as it was, in accordance with the racial love of color, the tasteful refinement with which the decoration of the case was treated made those around look garish and barbaric. But the most striking feature was a charming panel picture which occupied the place of the usual mask. This painting was a revelation to me. Except that it was executed in tempera instead of oil, it differed in no respect from modern work. There was nothing archaic or ancient about it. With its freedom of handling and its correct rendering of light and shade, it might have been painted yesterday; indeed, enclosed in an ordinary gilt frame, it might have passed without remark in an exhibition of modern portraits.
Miss Bellingham observed my admiration and smiled approvingly.
“It is a charming little portrait, isn’t it?” she said; “and such a sweet face too; so thoughtful and human, with just a shade of melancholy. But the whole thing is full of charm. I fell in love with it the first time I saw it. And it is so Greek!”
“Yes, it is, in spite of the Egyptian gods and symbols.”
“Rather because of them, I think,” said she. “There we have the typical Greek attitude, the genial, cultivated eclecticism that appreciated the fitness of even the most alien forms of art. There is Anubis standing beside the bier; there are Isis and Nephthys, and there below Horus and Tahuti. But we can’t suppose Artemidorus worshiped or believed in those gods. They are there because they are splendid decoration and perfectly appropriate in character. The real feeling of those who loved the dead man breaks out in the inscription.” She pointed to a band below the pectoral, where, in gilt capital letters, was written the two words, “Αρτεμιδορε ευψυχι.”
“Yes,” I said, “it is very dignified and very human.”
“And so sincere and full of real emotion,” she added. “I find it unspeakably touching. ‘O Artemidorus, farewell!’ There is the real note of human grief, the sorrow of eternal parting. How much finer it is than the vulgar boastfulness of the Semitic epitaphs, or our own miserable, insincere make-believe of the ‘Not lost but gone before’ type. He was gone from them forever; they would
