"It makes one feel very humble," she said at last. "So utterly, utterly unimportant. It doesn't seem as if it much matters what happens, not even to our love, Mike."
Mike raised his face from his hands. "I know," he said. "It is absolute devastation, nothing more or less. I'm shattered, Meg."
"It seems hardly worth while trying to do anything. Tomorrow we'll be like that. It's so difficult to explain, except that it's just wiped out my eagerness, it's made our own precious happiness seem absurd and hollow, human beings ridiculous."
"Dearest, I understand, I feel the same," Mike said. "All that down there"—he stuck his stick into the sand—"illustrates a bit too plainly the things we want to forget."
"It shows us the absurdity of what we think are the things that matter.
It's really destructive to anything like worldly fame and ambition.
Those poor shrunken cheeks, those poor leathery lips, those poor, poor
diadems and jewels!"
Mike let her ramble on. It was good for her to give utterance to her incoherent thoughts.
"They are so different when you see them in a museum," she said.
"They're impersonal there. They don't hurt one's self-importance."
"In Cairo they belong to a number and a glass case," Mike said. "They lose their individuality."
"Here they are a part of Egypt, that ancient, undying Egypt! You and I, like those dogs, Mike, won't have even bones to record us after three thousand years. Our bowels of tenderness will not lie intact in alabaster jars! Oh, Mike, take me in your arms! I want humanity, I want the things of to-day, I want all which that mummy has ridiculed! I hated it, Mike! I love life and your love! I want to forget that we are here to-day and gone to-morrow, mere human gnats."
Mike held her close to his heart. Meg could hear it beating. Oh, beloved humanity! Oh, dear human flesh and blood!