"What does it mean to you?" I broke the silence to ask.
"I don't know," Monny said. "All I know is that she's more wonderful than I expected, and as beautiful as the loveliest marble Venus of Italy, though a thousand times greater--if one perfect thing can be greater than another. She's so great that I don't think she can be meant to be a woman--or even a man. She is like a _soul_ carved in stone."
"All in a moment you have guessed the riddle!" I exclaimed, liking and understanding the girl better than I had liked or understood her yet. "I believe that's the secret of the Sphinx. The king who had this stupendous idea, and caused it to be carried out, said to some inspired sculptor, 'Make for me from the rock of the desert, a portrait, not of me as I am seen by men, in my mortal part or Khat, for that can be placed elsewhere; but an image of my real self, my soul or Ka, looking past the small things of this world into eternity, which lies beyond this desert and all deserts.' Then the sculptor made the Sphinx, and gave it such grandeur, such mystery of countenance that instinctively the souls of people recognized the _soul look_. You have a soul, and it told you the secret. Only those who have no souls find the Sphinx heavy or hideous, or utterly beyond their comprehension."
"Have I a soul?" Monny asked, dreamily. "Men I've known have told me I haven't. Yet sometimes I've thought I felt it fluttering. And if I have a soul, I shall find it in Egypt. Oh, I shall! Something--yes, the Sphinx herself!--tells me that."
I was tempted to ask "What about a heart?" And then--in a violent hurry, before anybody came--to mention my own, into which the moon seemed pouring a little of the honey it had brought for the Sphinx. I did feel that some one owed a moonlight proposal under the Sphinx's nose (or the place where its nose had been) to such a girl as Monny. Her Egyptian experience could never be perfect and complete unless she were proposed to on the night of the full moon, with the Sphinx's blessing; and as no better man was here to do it, I could not be thought conceited if I took the duty upon myself. Besides, Brigit would so thoroughly approve!
"Look here, Biddy, I mean Monny," I began hastily, "there's something I want to tell you, something very important you ought to know, because matters can't go on much longer as they are--"