“Y-yes, of course,” the wretched man replied, still standing like one in a dream.
Daniel took the cigar, lit it, and, turning round, walked out of the room.
In the blazing sunlight outside he paused and stared across the dazzling open space, which, towards the west, led down to the Nile. A scorching wind beat in his face, and blew the dust of his footsteps towards the building which he had left. “Phew!” he whispered. “Thus goes ten thousand pounds a year and a peerage!”
He gazed across the river to the shimmering line of the desert which could be seen in the distance between the palms, and held out his hands towards it.
[CHAPTER VI—TOWARDS THE SUNSET]
During the warm weather an afternoon siesta is habitual to the residents in Egypt, and Muriel at once lent her support to the custom with undisguised approval. This was but her third day in Cairo, yet, as soon as Daniel Lane had taken his departure, she went up to her room as though to the manner born, and slipped off her dress.
The bed looked cool and inviting, and a mass of white roses upon a table beside her pillow spread a gentle fragrance through the room; but this she thoughtlessly dissipated by lighting a Turkish cigarette. She did not particularly want to smoke, but she felt that the little gold-tipped cigarette was in keeping with her state of dainty semi-undress, with her somewhat exotic surroundings, and with the French novel which she had selected as an inducement to sleep.
Anybody peeping at her through the keyhole as she lay upon the rose-bud coverlet, bare arms and silk-stockinged legs asprawl, would have been hard put to it to decide whether here rested the girlish chastity of English tradition or the naughtiness of French fiction; for nowadays, when the one has had the hardihood at last to claim its share of the habiliments of the other, appearances are astonishingly deceptive. Actually, however, Muriel was but an innocent production of that form of upbringing which, while encouraging independence of action, accustoms the minds to the standards of the seraglio.
She had moved freely in the segment of London society which patronizes Covent Garden, hobnobs with the stage, and becomes ecstatic over the latest painter, sculptor, poet, or dancer. She had been shown all the little vices and failings of the world in their most attractive guise; and for her special edification the ancient virtues had been rendered even more seemingly ridiculous than the virtuous themselves had made them. Obediently she had laid her thoughtless tribute at the altar of the alluring goddess of today; and she had been shown the correct posture of obeisance that was to be made to the World, the Flesh, and the Devil.
She had been taught, if she had not actually mastered, all the short cuts to that appearance of culture which is so highly appraised; and, in matters of taste and form, she had been shown how to be bizarre without being crude, audacious without being vulgar. She knew just what to say about men of letters, and what books to leave lying about the room; and in regard to politics, the church, and sport, she had been shown how to lump the three together under the one heading of “Tradition.”