'Eh?' Tony glanced up as though he had again forgotten what he was going to say. 'Oh yes,' he went on, 'the Russian woman, the Princess I met in Egypt. She talked a bit like that once… I remember now.'
'Like what?' Tom felt a sudden, breathless curiosity in him: he was afraid the other would change his mind, or pass to something else, or forget what he was going to say. It would prove another Japanese tale— disappear before it satisfied.
But Tony went on at last, noticing, perhaps, his cousin's interest.
'I was up at Edfu after birds,' he said, 'and she had a dahabieh on the river. Some friends took me there to tea, or something. It was nothing particular. Only it occurred to me just now when you talked of spirals and things.'
'You talked about the spiral?' Tom asked. 'Talked with her about it, I mean?' He was slow, almost stupid compared to the other, who seemed to flash lightly and quickly over a dozen ideas at once. But there was this real, natural sympathy between them both again. It seemed he knew exactly what his cousin was going to say.
Tony, blowing the foam off his beer glass, proceeded to quench his wholesome thirst. 'Not exactly,' he said at length, 'but we talked, I remember, along that line. I was explaining about the flight of birds— that all wild animal life moves in a spontaneous sort of natural rhythm— with an unconscious grace, I mean, we've lost because we think too much. Birds in particular rise and fall with a swoop, the simplest, freest movement in the world—like a wave——'
'Yes?' interrupted Tom, leaning over the table a little and nearly upsetting his untouched glass. 'I like that idea. It's true.'
'And—oh, that all the forces known to science move in a similar way—by wave-form, don't you see? Something like that it was.' He took another draught of the nectar his day's exertions had certainly earned.
'She said that?' asked Tom, watching his cousin's face buried in the enormous mug.
Tony set it down with a sigh of intense satisfaction, 'I said it,' he exclaimed with a frank egoism. 'You're too tired after all your falls this afternoon to listen properly. I was the teacher on that occasion, she the adoring listener! But if you want to know what she said too, I'll tell you.'