“Ah, you are so indifferent,” said Féraz gaily,—he had no quite lost his dreamy and abstracted look, and talked on in an eager boyish way that suited his years,—he was barely twenty. “You are so bent on great thoughts that you cannot see little things, But these dukes and earls who come to visit you do not consider themselves little,—not they!”
“Yet many of them are the least among little men,” said El-Râmi with a touch of scorn in his mellow accents. “Dowered with great historic names which they almost despise, they do their best to drag the memory of their ancient lineage into dishonour by vulgar passions, low tastes, and a scorn as well as lack of true intelligence. Let us not talk of them. The English aristocracy was once a magnificent tree, but its broad boughs are fallen,—lopped off and turned into saleable timber,—and there is but a decaying stump of it left. And so Zaroba said nothing to you to-night?”
“Scarce a word. She was very sullen. She bade me tell you all was well,—that is her usual formula. I do not understand it;—what is it that should be well or ill? You never explain your mystery!”
He smiled, but there was a vivid curiosity in his fine eyes,—he looked as if he would have asked more had he dared to do so.
El-Râmi evaded his questioning glance. “Speak of yourself,” he said. “Did you wander at all into your Dreamland to-day?”
“I was there when you called me,” replied Féraz quickly. “I saw my home,—its trees and flowers,—I listened to the ripple of its fountains and streams. It is harvest-time there, do you know? I heard the reapers singing as they carried home the sheaves.”
His brother surveyed him with a fixed and wondering scrutiny.
“How absolute you are in your faith!” he said half enviously. “You think it is your home,—but it is only an idea after all,—an idea, born of a vision.”
“Does a mere visionary idea engender love and longing?” exclaimed Féraz impetuously. “Oh no, El-Râmi,—it cannot do so! I know the land I see so often in what you call a ‘dream,’—its mountains are familiar to me,—its people are my people; yes!—I am remembered there, and so are you,—we dwelt there once,—we shall dwell there again. It is your home as well as mine,—that bright and far-off star where there is no death but only sleep,—why were we exiled from our happiness, El-Râmi? Can your wisdom tell?”
“I know nothing of what you say,” returned El-Râmi brusquely. “As I told you, you talk like a poet,—harsher men than I would add, like a madman. You imagine you were born or came into being in a different planet from this,—that you lived there,—that you were exiled from thence by some mysterious doom, and were condemned to pass into human existence here;—well, I repeat, Féraz,—this is your own fancy,—the result of the strange double life you lead, which is not by my will or teaching. I believe only in what can be proved—and this that you tell me is beyond all proof.”