By the time Kenkenes had reached the spot, all lightness in his heart had gone out like the extinguishing of a candle, and the weight of suspense, the fear of failure, fell on him as suddenly.  He approached the elaborate facade of the solemn portals, climbed the pairs of steps, and paused at each of the many landings with a prayer for the success of his mission, not for the repose of the royal soul, after the custom of other visitors.  With trembling hands he pushed the doors, rough with inscriptions, and the great stone valves swung ponderously inward, the bronze pins making no sound as they turned in the sockets.  Kenkenes entered and closed the portals behind him.

Instantly all sound of the outside world was cut off—­the sound of the wind, the chafing of the sands on the hills above, the movement and cries of night-birds, beasts and insects.  Absolute stillness and original night surrounded him.

With all speed he lighted his lamp, but the flaring name illuminated only a little space in the brooding, hovering blackness about him.

The atmosphere was stagnant and heavily burdened with old aromatic scent, and the silence seemed to have accumulated in the years.  Even the soft whetting of his sandal, as he walked, made echoes that shouted at him.  The little blaze fizzed and sputtered noisily and each throb of his heart sounded like a knock on the portal.

He did not pause.  The darkness might cloud and tinge and swallow up his light as turbid water absorbs the clear; the silence might resent the violation.  This was the habitation of a royal soul in perpetual vigil over its corpse and vested with all the powers and austere propensities of a thing supernatural.  But not once did the impulse come to him to fly.  Rachel’s face attended him like a lamp.

He moved forward, his path only discovered to him step by step as the light advanced, the sumptuous frescoes done by the hand of his father emerging, one detail at a time.  The solemn figures fixed accusing eyes upon him from every frieze; the passive countenance of the monarch himself confronted him from every wall.  One wondrous chamber after another he traversed, for the tomb penetrated the very core of the mountain.

The innermost crypt contained the altars.  This was the sanctuary, the holy of holies, never entered except by a hierarch.

When Kenkenes reached the final threshold he paused.  Thus far, his presence had been merely a midnight intrusion.  If he entered the sanctuary his coming would be violation.  He thought of the distress of Rachel and dared.

The first alabaster altar glistened suddenly out of the night like a bank of snow.  Kenkenes’ sandal grated on the sandy dust that lay thick on the floor.  Not even the keeper had entered this crypt to remove the accumulated dust of six years.

Under this floor of solid granite was the pit containing the sarcophagi of the dead monarch, of his favorite son and destined heir, Shaemus, and his well-beloved queen, Neferari Thermuthis.  The opening into the pit had been sealed when Rameses had descended to emerge no more.  The chamber over it was brilliant with frescoing and covered with inscriptions.  There were three magnificent altars of alabaster and over each was an oval containing the name of one of the three sleepers in the pit below.