“Why, it’s Mad Quinward!” he exclaimed.
The second looked at the picture. He removed his helmet, as though entering a shrine.
“That will be deemed one of the world’s great masterpieces,” he said reverently. “You saw him paint it?”
Simply, the lad replied:
“I have been here all night.”
CHAPTER VI
ACROSS THE DESERT ON CAMEL-BACK
The sun was high before Mad Quinward awoke, Perry staying beside him faithfully. The news of the great picture had spread, and when the artist roused himself, he found himself the center of a crowd. Many people pressed forward with congratulations, but the painter seemed dazed and silent. The boy urged him to come to the hotel for breakfast, an invitation warmly seconded by Dr. Hunt, for the professor, as fully as any one, had realized the wonder of that canvas, painted in an ecstasy during the first flush of an Egyptian sunrise.
But Quinward, never again to be called “Mad” Quinward, strapped up his little easel, took the canvas—which had been blank for twenty years, and now had blossomed into so marvelous a work, and with a word here and there, turned to the lebbek-bordered road and trudged back to Cairo. Though less than a day had elapsed since Perry first met him, the boy had a pang of loneliness when he saw the artist go.
“You’d better get a nap,” said the professor to Perry, when Quinward’s figure had disappeared along the sun-lit road. “We’ll be going soon.”
The boy shook himself into reality.