“No.”
“How can you tell, you strange fellow?”
“Not difficult, the one thing I always know.”
“Can you always tell whether a stranger is your friend?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are an Oriental.” He unclasped as he spoke, with a little shudder. Those words—he had said them to Mrs. Moore in the mosque in the beginning of the cycle, from which, after so much suffering, he had got free. Never be friends with the English! Mosque, caves, mosque, caves. And here he was starting again. He handed the magic ointment to him. “Take this, think of me when you use it. I shall never want it back. I must give you one little present, and it is all I have got; you are Mrs. Moore’s son.”
“I am that,” he murmured to himself; and a part of Aziz’ mind that had been hidden seemed to move and force its way to the top.
“But you are Heaslop’s brother also, and alas, the two nations cannot be friends.”
“I know. Not yet.”
“Did your mother speak to you about me?”