"Ah," Abdul breathed, "where were you, Sidi, when I was out there dying for you?"
"Hiding up the tallest cinnamon tree, like a monkey," Dr. Stefanik said.
They sat there upon the grass for a long while in companionable silence, heeding the sounds of the night, which was balmy and infinitely peaceful.
There came a high-pitched, long-drawn-out scream from somewhere on the ridge.
"They got him," Abdul said.
"And now they will pluck him, I suppose," said Dr. Stefanik. "There, by the way, is a thing that even I have never completely understood about them. Their insatiable curiosity, of course, is a vestigial trait that will pass, but this other drive, I fear, this rather alarming passion that they have shown for the up-breeding of the species may be some universal of life itself that no man may touch or alter."
Down the path from the ridge, a small, white-robed figure came running, far ahead of the others, bent upon her own schemes of evolution.
Abdul crouched lower in the shadows. "That one makes even the heart of a man swell within his breast," he whispered, "for she does not ever give up."
"That no man may touch," Dr. Stefanik repeated, and nodded his shaggy head wisely. "As an idealist, I may have given them shoes and enlightenment, but I did not give them this, and so they are not altogether mine. His kind still professes to believe in the common denominator and the common level, seeking to drag down the few from their gilt palaces and haul up the masses from the muck. Tell me, as a Hadj who is, at the same time, undoubtedly vermin-ridden, do you believe in the equality of men—or can you honestly wish it?"
"All of us to be Effendis?"