"Oh! Is it 'of course'? There are others who answer that description."
Fenton smiled. "But it's going to be her show."
"She is under the impression," I reminded him, laughing, "that all Egypt, including the Nile, and you and your green turban, are her 'show'."
Anthony did not answer. Perhaps already he was thinking of something else. I should have liked to be sure exactly what his smile meant. Was it for Monny? Was it for Biddy? Or only for an adventure which he saw in the distance?
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE ASIUT AFFAIR
Nothing could be less appropriate to the Spirit of the Nile than our spirit in setting out. We had turned our backs upon medieval Cairo, and our faces toward Ethiopia. Our minds should have teemed with thoughts of early gods, and the mysteries of their great temples. But not at all. Medieval or prehistoric, it was all one to us in our secret hearts, which throbbed with passionate excitement over our own small affairs of to-day, and to-morrow. Little cared we, as our white boat bore us southward, on the bosom of the sacred river—little cared we for the love-story of the Great Enchantress—pupil of Magician Thoth, —fair Isis, in whose honour that boat was named. Her tragic journey along this river, whose stream she could augment by one sacred tear, should have been followed by our fancy. We should have seen with our minds' eyes the lovely lady asking news of the painted boat which carried the dead body of her murdered husband Osiris, asking always vainly, until she thought of questioning the little children. But instead we thought of our own love-stories and amusements. We played bridge, and danced the Tango on deck; we drummed on the piano, or warbled the latest musical comedy airs. Above all, we flirted, or gossiped about those who flirted, if for any reason we were off the active list of flirters ourselves.
To be sure, we had brought learned books, and took pains to leave them in our chairs, open at marked passages of deep interest to students. We even scribbled heterogeneous notes, if for a moment there were nothing more amusing to do; and bits of paper scampered wildly about the deck informing those who retrieved them that "Nub" was ancient Egyptian for "gold," that Osiris created men and women from the tears he wept over his own body, cut in pieces by Set; that the ivy was his favourite plant; or that "scarabeus" was the Greek word for a blue-green beetle, which created itself from itself, becoming the symbol of eternal life. All this, however, was affectation. Each hoped others might think that he or she was not an ordinary tourist: each wished to pose as a devotee of some phase of history concerning gods, temples, or portrait statues, anything not difficult to "study up." But life was too strong for us. The colour and glamour of the Nile got into our blood. Hathor, goddess of Love, bewitched us into doing queer things which we should not have dreamed of doing if we hadn't drunk "Nile champagne." Yet after all, what did it matter? We were absorbing what our hearts, if not our minds, called out for: the enchantment of Egypt.
More or less conscientiously I performed the duties Sir Marcus Lark had bribed me to perform. I gave neat little lectures, and tried to remind people, whether they liked it or not, that almost every moment the boat was taking us past places of astonishing interest.