At last her horse had had enough, and his gallop decreased to a trot, his trot to a walk. Her companion turned a laughing red face to her. He had caught the infection of her spirits, and, like her, was conscious of a burning sense of youth and strength. The perspiration was streaming down his cheeks.
“Phew!” he exclaimed, and recklessly mopped his forehead with a coloured silk handkerchief intended only for a breast-pocket ornament. “D’you often get taken like that?”
Muriel laughed excitedly, and, twisting the reins around her arm, pulled off her hat, thereby letting loose a tumbling mass of brown hair, which fell about her shoulders. Then, handing the hat to Rupert to hold, she raised her hands and coiled up the hair on to her head again, fastening it with the few remaining hairpins.
Rupert uttered an ordinary, vulgar whistle. He, too, had been galloped into naturalness. “By Jove!” he cried. “You have got glorious hair!”
Muriel settled her hat upon her head once more, and picked up her reins.
“I’ll let it down properly for you some day,” she said. At that moment she would have stood on her head, had anybody dared her to do so. A law should be passed prohibiting women from galloping.
“I’ll kiss you if you do,” replied Rupert. The law should, perhaps, include young men as well.
He was startled at his audacity; but Muriel was not in a mental condition to do otherwise than laugh.
Thus they arrived, like two flushed children, at the end of the road, the hotel on their right, the mighty Pyramids rising up like hand-made mountains on their left, backed by the descending sun. In front of them stretched the desert—a ridge of white and yellow shelving rocks, and great shadowed slopes of sand mounting to the clear sky. Southwards, at the foot of the hills, stood a native village, the clustered white houses and dignified groups of palms reflected in the still waters of the inundation which, at this time of the year, cover the surrounding fields.
Outside the hotel several Bedouin dragomans sauntered about or sat smoking and chatting; and a few camels and donkeys, saddled in readiness for hire, stood tethered near by.