Of the wonderful heretic, Amenhotep the Fourth, I had barely heard--at the most he had been a mere name; the Hittites a mythical race of undetermined habitat; while cuneiform tablets had presented themselves to my mind merely as an uncouth kind of fossil biscuit suited to the digestion of a pre-historic ostrich.
Now all this was changed.

As we sat with our chairs creaking together and she whispered the story of those stirring times into my receptive ear--talking is strictly forbidden in the reading-room--the disjointed fragments arranged themselves into a romance of supreme fascination.
Egyptian, Babylonian, Aramaean, Hittite, Memphis, Babylon, Hamath, Megiddo--I swallowed them all thankfully, wrote them down and asked for more.

Only once did I disgrace myself.

An elderly clergyman of ascetic and acidulous aspect had passed us with a glance of evident disapproval, clearly setting us down as intruding philanderers; and when I contrasted the parson's probable conception of the whispered communications that were being poured into my ear so tenderly and confidentially with the dry reality, I chuckled aloud.

But my fair task-mistress only paused, with her finger on the page, smilingly to rebuke me, and then went on with the dictation.