The vivid scarlet of the flowers, the gleam of the shining shells on the walls, the mournful figure of the ivory Christ stretched on the cross among all those pagan emblems,--the intense silence broken only by the slow drip, drip of water trickling somewhere behind the cavern,--and more than these outward things,--his own impressive conviction that he was with the imperial Dead--imperial because past the sway of empire--all made a powerful impression on his mind.

Overcoming by degrees his first sensations of awe, he approached the sarcophagus and examined it.

It was solidly closed and mortared all round, so that it might have been one compact coffin-shaped block of stone so far as its outward appearance testified.

Stooping more closely, however, to look at the brilliant poppy-wreath, he started back with a slight exclamation.

Cut deeply in the hard granite he read for the second time that odd name-- THELMA It belonged to some one dead, then--not to the lovely living woman who had so lately confronted him in the burning glow of the midnight sun?
He felt dismayed at his unthinking precipitation,--he had, in his fancy, actually associated _her_, so full of radiant health and beauty, with what was probably a mouldering corpse in that hermetically sealed tenement of stone! This idea was unpleasant, and jarred upon his feelings.