In any case, we had no trouble at Esneh, and saw no sinister faces peering out of low doorways in the bazaars, or over the heads of the pretty (sometimes fair and blue-eyed) dancing girls' descendants.
Buried in the heart of the village we came upon the temple. Only the portico was visible under piled houses and a triumphant mosque; but once we were down in the entombed temple itself, it gave a sense of secrecy, and mystic rites, to look up from under the dark roof of heavy stone with its painted zodiac, out from hidden halls of carving and colour, to the clustered houses of dried brick built before the temple was uncovered. There was a sense of tragedy and failure, too, toiling up the steep slope to the town level, and passing, on the half-buried walls, gigantic carved figures making thwarted gestures, in commemoration of kingly triumphs forgotten hundreds upon hundreds of years ago.
At night there was fantasia on board, with our boatmen dancing each other down, like Highlanders, and the next day brought us to Edfu, which all the women were wild to see because Robert Hichens had called its green-blue the "true colour of love": an adorable temple sacred to Horus, as there he conquered and killed Set.
It was only after we had passed Sir Ernest Cassell's red house, with the smoky irrigation works where fourteen hundred Arabs have chased the desert into the background, and after we had visited the splendid twin temples of Light and Darkness at Kom Ombo, towering majestically above the Nile bank, that I found time to catechize and lecture Miss Guest. I contrived to separate her from her sculptor, and lure her to a part of the deck unfrequented because it was windy. Rachel was looking happy, young and prosperous, in one of Monny's most becoming (and expensive) dresses.
At first, I think she felt inclined to be flattered by my desire for her society, for I had never yet wished her joy, or formally congratulated Bailey. One look into my eyes, with those clever, slanting green orbs of hers, however, and instinct must have told her that my intention was different. She glanced round for an excuse to escape, but found none, for I hedged her in from all her friends. Then she quickly decided to shunt me off on an emergency track laid by herself.
"What a wonderful day it's been!" she remarked. And Kom Ombo is one of the best temples. The only thing I didn't like was those mummied crocodiles. Their smiles look so hypocritical, and to think they've been smiling them for thousands of years—"
"It must be unpleasant to smile the smile of a hypocrite, even for a few weeks," I seized the chance to work up to business.
"Yes, indeed," agreed Miss Guest a slight colour staining her cheeks. "And didn't you notice several new sorts of wall-inscriptions?"
"Yes," I admitted. "But if you don't mind, I'd like to skip sixteen or seventeen centuries and come down to you. I've been wanting a chat—"
"Why, I'm delighted!" she exclaimed, frightened, but all the more ingratiating. "Oh, isn't the Nile beautiful as we come toward Nubia? And aren't the sakkiyehs more interesting than the shadoofs, which they use mostly when the river is low? Willis said quite a lovely thing, about the sakkiyehs: that their chains of great water cups, going up and down, look like enormous strings of red and green prayer-beads, being 'told' by unseen hands. He ought to be a poet, he's so romantic."