{"product_id":"2940012270986","title":"IRAS: a mystery","description":"Scanned, proofed and corrected from the original edition for your reading pleasure. (Worth every penny!)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e***\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAn excerpt:\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e...but that the sarcophagus held no mummy after all, but the body, or what had been the body, of a girl who had met with the horrible fate of burial while yet alive—doubtless through the jealous vengeance of this rejected lover, this priest of the crocodile god. But that, if the tablet spoke truth, there had been no embalming, and could be no analysis, was clear.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs I sat at the table with the inscription before me, my back was turned to the coffin. I pushed the chair sideways and glanced round at it, when all power of movement was arrested by surprise. Thrown carelessly out of the disturbed wrappings, and hanging over the edge, was a woman's arm-slender, exquisitely rounded, warm with life. Was it believable that a human creature could have existed under such conditions and in such suspension for three thousand years? The trance of a toad shut in a rock paralleled by enchantment! The first shock of conviction past, I started to my feet—I would look nearer at this wonder. The rotten shreds of tissue had been torn apart by the movement of the arm, and there within lay the sleeper in the perfect bloom of her young womanhood, white robed from throat to foot, the darkly fringed eyes still closed, the soft breathing just stirring the linen folds which veiled her breast.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe face I looked upon was beautiful, but it was a marvel the more that I did not regard it in the least as one looks upon the beauty of a stranger. I knew my heart's one love when I saw her face to face. All the aching loss of my solitary life—all I had lacked hardly knowing—was present to me in that moment, as I recognised a need filled, an incompleteness suddenly made whole. Will that be the fashion of those meetings in a world beyond to which some strong in faith look forward? Speechless with the wonder of it, new born into joy and into a rarer atmosphere where it was difficult at first to breathe, I stood and looked upon the sleep which I alone from the beginning of the ages had been ordained to break. Was it moments or hours before I took the warm small hand in my own, before the red lips parted with a sigh, the dark-fringed eyelids lifted, and the eyes and the soul behind them looked into mine?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt first with a question in them. Then came knowledge, recognition, joy in the sweetness of a dawning smile, though the lips were still serious. \"Oh,\" she said, \"I am not dreaming! I am awake at last; and it is you—my lord.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow here was a fresh wonder. This girl, who had lived her waking life when the savage dwellers in our islands of the sea were grubbing in fellowship with the cave-bear, and gabbling some dialect of Norse, had spoken to me in perfect English, and understood when I replied to her in the same tongue. It seemed then to come by nature that we should be one in language; but the surprise of it struck me after. I believe my ear was so attuned to the soul of her speech that I heard this rather than the form of words; between us two the confusion which fell upon the builders of Babel had been done away. I noticed later that she hesitated to address any one but myself, and did so in the imperfect speech of a foreigner; while at first she seemed unable to comprehend what was said to her, unless a touch completed the link with my understanding of it. But I am anticipating.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCan I tell what I replied to her—can I remember what expression of words rose to the surface of that driven sea of feeling which had been stirred to the very depths? Her lord! Nay, but her slave and servant; hers absolutely by the right which love has over love. A thought expressed itself between us as conceived, and mine involuntarily had been—would she turn from me? Her radiant youth, though so incredibly the elder of my own, assorted ill with that weather-beaten scarecrow of a countenance which I saw daily in the glass, and the grey streaks in my hair. Her delicate fine hand which lay in my work-hardened palm accentuated the contrast.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe had raised herself by this time, and was sitting up in the coffin while I knelt beside her; and she laid the other hand with a momentary touch on that same grizzled hair.","brand":"OGB","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47081118269680,"sku":"2940012270986","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940012270986_p0.jpg?v=1763554402","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940012270986","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}