Gervase moved uneasily.

"You have got Araxes on the brain, Doctor," he said, with a forced
smile, "and in our conversation we are forgetting that the
Princess has promised to tell us a fairytale, the story of the
Great Pyramid."

The Princess looked at him, then at Denzil Murray, and lastly at
Dr. Dean.

"Would you really care to hear it?" she asked.

"Most certainly!" they all three answered.

She rose from the dinner-table.

"Come here to the window," she said. "You can see the great
structure now, in the dusky light,--look at it well and try, if
you can, to realize that deep, deep down in the earth on which it
stands is a connected gallery of rocky caves wherein no human foot
has ever penetrated since the Deluge swept over the land and made
a desert of all the old-time civilization!"

Her slight figure appeared to dilate as she spoke, raising one
slender hand and arm to point at the huge mass that towered up
against the clear, starlit sky. Her listeners were silent, awed
and attentive.

"One of the latest ideas concerning the Pyramids is, as you know,
that they were built as towers of defence against the Deluge. That