El-Râmi raised his hand with a slight commanding gesture.
“It is not a certainty—” he said—“inasmuch as there is no certainty. And there is no ‘Must-be,’—there is only the Soul’s ‘Shall-be’!”
And with these somewhat enigmatical words he bade his friend farewell, and went his way.
XII.
It was yet early in the afternoon when he arrived back in London. He went straight home to his own house, letting himself in as usual with his latch-key. In the hall he paused, listening. He half expected to hear Féraz playing one of his delicious dreamy improvisations,—but there was not a sound anywhere, and the deep silence touched him with an odd sense of disappointment and vague foreboding. His study door stood slightly ajar,—he pushed it wider open very noiselessly and looked in. His young brother was there, seated in a chair near the window, reading. El-Râmi gazed at him dubiously, with a slowly dawning sense that there was some alteration in his appearance which he could not all at once comprehend. Presently he realised that Féraz had evidently yielded to some overwhelming suggestion of personal vanity, which had induced him to put on more brilliant attire. He had changed his plain white linen garb for one of richer material, composed in the same Eastern fashion,—he wore a finely-chased gold belt, from which a gold-sheathed dagger depended,—and a few gold ornaments gleamed here and there among the drawn silken folds of his upper vest. He looked handsome enough for a new Agathon as he sat there apparently absorbed in study,—the big volume he perused resting partly on his knee,—but El-Râmi’s brow contracted with sudden anger as he observed him from the half-open doorway where he stood, himself unseen,—and his dark face grew very pale. He threw the door back on its hinges with a clattering sound and entered the room.
“Féraz!”
Féraz looked up, lifting his eyelids indifferently and smiling coldly.
“What, El-Râmi! Back so early? I did not expect you till nightfall.”
“Did you not?” said his brother, advancing slowly—“Pray how was that? You know I generally return after a night’s absence early in the next day. Where is your usual word of welcome? What ails you? You seem in a very odd humour!”
“Do I?”—and Féraz stretched himself a little,—rose, yawning, and laid down the volume he held on the table—“I am not aware of it myself, I assure you. How did you find your old madman? And did you tell him you were nearly as mad as he?”