Upon a housetop beneath the white disc of the moon, Thersites, a Greek, sat with Crobyle and Antonius, who was a Roman soldier. The evening was pleasant. A soft wind blew from the west, bearing with it, now and then, the distant cry of some night-prowler on the desert beyond the tombs of the kings. Spread out on both sides of the silent river lay the crumbling city, Thebes, once mighty and still beautiful, spectral and aloof in the moonlight. Within its temples, old men still clung to well-nigh forgotten ceremonies of the gods. In the great buildings, fissures and breaks had appeared, stones had fallen. In the houses, a discontented and poverty-stricken people muttered and prayed and starved. Yet all these, all things which were small, misshapen, unhappy, were blotted out in the clean light and the dense shadows of the Egyptian night . . .
"It was there, at the edge of the culti-
