I’m not—not hopeless, though I’ve had a long hard fight here in Egypt; and I’ve done so little.”... She kept smoothing out the letter she had had from Kingsley Bey, as though unconsciously. “But it is coming, the better day. I know it. Some one will come who will do all that I have pleaded for—stop the corvee and give the peasants a chance; stop slavery, and purify the harem and start the social life on a higher basis; remove a disgrace from the commerce of an afflicted land; remove—remove once for all such men as Kingsley Bey; make it impossible for fortunes to be made out of human flesh and blood.” She had the rapt look of the dreamer. Suddenly she recovered her more worldly mood: “What are you doing here?” she added. “Have you come to take up official life? Have you some public position—of responsibility? Ah, perhaps,”—she laughed almost merrily,—“you are the very man; the great reformer. Perhaps you think and feel as I do, though you’ve argued against me. Perhaps you only wanted to see how real my devotion to this cause is. Tell me, are you only a tourist—I was going to say idler, but I know you are not; you have the face of a man who does things—are you tourist or worker here? What does Egypt mean to you? That sounds rather non-conformist, but Egypt, to me, is the saddest, most beautiful, most mysterious place in the world. All other nations, all other races, every person in the world should be interested in Egypt. Egypt is the lost child of Creation—the dear, pitiful waif of genius and mystery of the world. She has kept the calendar of the ages—has outlasted all other nations, and remains the same as they change and pass. She has been the watcher of the world, the one who looks on, and suffers, as the rest of the nations struggle for and wound her in their turn. What does Egypt mean to you? What would you do for her—anything?”
There was no more satirical laughter in his eyes. He was deeply in earnest, disturbed, even excited. “Egypt means everything in the world to me. I would do what I could for her.”
“What has she done for you?”
“She has brought me to you again—to make me know that what you were by Skaw Fell all those years ago, you are now, and a thousand times more.”
She parried the dangerous meaning in his voice, refused to see the tenderness in his manner.
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” she added in a tone vainly trying to be unconcerned. “It is a pity that our youth pursues us in forms so little desirable.... Who are they?” she added quickly, nodding towards the shore, from which Dicky was coming with an Egyptian officer and a squad of soldiers.
“H’m,” he responded laughing, “it looks like a matter of consequence. A Pasha, I should think, to travel with an escort like that.”
“They’re coming here,” she added, and, calling to her servant, ordered coffee.
Suddenly Kingsley got to his feet, with a cry of consternation; but sat down again smiling with a shrug of the shoulders.
“What is it?” she asked, with something like anxiety, for she had seen the fleeting suspicion in his look.