"On the contrary, I was greatly alive," he answered gravely. "I was
studying mummies and falling in love with the Sphinx. And just at the
end I had a most interesting kind of experience; I came upon what
looked like a woman, but turned out to be a mummy and later froze into
a block of ice!"

"Gritzko!" they called in chorus. "Can anyone invent such impossible
stories as you!"

"I assure you I am speaking the truth. Is it not so, Madame?" And he
looked at Tamara and smiled with fleeting merry mockery in his eyes.
"See," and he again turned to his guests, "Madame has been in Egypt she
tells me, and should be able to vouch for my truth."

Tamara pulled herself together.

"I think the Sphinx must have cast a spell over you, Prince," she said,
"so that you could not distinguish the real from the false. I saw no
women who were mummies and then turned into ice!"

Some one distracted Princess Sonia's attention for a moment, and the
Prince whispered, "One can melt ice!"

"To find a mummy?" Tamara asked with grave innocence. "That would be
the inverse rotation."

"And lastly a woman--in one's arms," the Prince said.

Tamara turned to her neighbor and became engrossed in his conversation