It was in a secluded corner of the great hall, and Henriot turned to see the woman’s stately figure coming towards them across the thick carpet that deadened her footsteps.  She came sailing up, her black eyes fixed upon his face.  Very erect, head upright, shoulders almost squared, she moved wonderfully well; there was dignity and power in her walk.  She was dressed in black, and her face was like the night.  He found it impossible to say what lent her this air of impressiveness and solemnity that was almost majestic.  But there was this touch of darkness and of power in the way she came that made him think of some sphinx-like figure of stone, some idol motionless in all its parts but moving as a whole, and gliding across—­sand.  Beneath those level lids her eyes stared hard at him.  And a faint sensation of distress stirred in him deep, deep down.  Where had he seen those eyes before?

He bowed, as she joined them, and Vance led the way to the armchairs in a corner of the lounge.  The meeting, as the talk that followed, he felt, were all part of a preconceived plan.  It had happened before.  The woman, that is, was familiar to him—­to some part of his being that had dropped stitches of old, old memory.

Lady Statham!  At first the name had disappointed him.  So many folk wear titles, as syllables in certain tongues wear accents—­without them being mute, unnoticed, unpronounced.  Nonentities, born to names, so often claim attention for their insignificance in this way.  But this woman, had she been Jemima Jones, would have made the name distinguished and select.  She was a big and sombre personality.  Why was it, he wondered afterwards, that for a moment something in him shrank, and that his mind, metaphorically speaking, flung up an arm in self-protection?  The instinct flashed and passed.  But it seemed to him born of an automatic feeling that he must protect—­not himself, but the woman from the man.  There was confusion in it all; links were missing.  He studied her intently.  She was a woman who had none of the external feminine signals in either dress or manner, no graces, no little womanly hesitations and alarms, no daintiness, yet neither anything distinctly masculine.  Her charm was strong, possessing; only he kept forgetting that he was talking to a—­woman; and the thing she inspired in him included, with respect and wonder, somewhere also this curious hint of dread.  This instinct to protect her fled as soon as it was born, for the interest of the conversation in which she so quickly plunged him obliterated all minor emotions whatsoever.  Here, for the first time, he drew close to Egypt, the Egypt he had sought so long.  It was not to be explained.  He felt it.