The student Smith accidentally sleeps in at a museum, of Egyptian antiquities, seeing some kind of ceremony take place where another man offers a ring to a female mummy.
The stranger is apparently a victim of a curse (elixir of life) and wants to rejoin his love. Smith wishes to leave. “Would Osiris want such a thing?” The man laments about being in love but her growing ill. To properly die, he needs the ring of Thoth. He wants to join his love, a priest beat him to it. “Health as a disease.”
The student leaves as the stranger allows him to. The stranger is able to kill himself and the man reads about his dying embrace to the mummy.
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A well and good short story about love, life, and conviction.