"I understand," Ireton said. "There's something out here, in the simplicity of desert life and the East generally, that lessens our wants. The fruits of hard labour are not so necessary as in England; the flesh-pots of Egypt are in the sunshine. If you have just enough to get along with, here in the East, and have cultivated tastes, life can be wonderfully beautiful. Poverty need never mean degradation—in fact, it has its advantages."
"That's it!" Michael Amory said. "I want to let people know how wonderfully beautiful life can be, even without wealth and worldly power, and why it is beautiful. I want them to realize the essence of things, to let those poor, crowded, degraded wretches in London know the sweetness of work in God's open spaces. I feel that I must do my little bit in helping things forward. I want to let in a few chinks of light. . . ."
Hadassah, oddly enough, finished his quotation from "Pippa Passes":
"You want to give them eyes to see that
"'The year's at the Spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled:
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven—
All's right with the world!'"
Michael Ireton suggested that he should go off for a time into the desert and find himself. "There's nothing else so helpful," he said. "I've tried it." Hadassah's eyes met her husband's. She understood; she remembered.
And so Michael Amory left them strengthened and helped, not so much by their advice as by their understanding. Hadassah had charmed him, as she charmed everyone who met her. Her happiness as the wife of the Englishman who had scorned the gossiping tongues of Cairo by marrying her, and her pride in the young Nicholas, their son, who was just learning to walk, made Michael Amory a little envious. Michael Ireton's home and life seemed almost ideal. This wealthy, happy couple lived in the world and yet not for the world; they had discovered the true meaning of life.
Michael's thoughts were brimful of Hadassah and her husband, her beauty and the romance of their marriage, the details of which were familiar to him, as he pushed his way through the labyrinth of native streets in mediaeval Cairo.
After the silence of the desert, the noise was terrific—the shouts of the water-carriers, the yells of the native drivers of the swaying cabs, as they dashed at a reckless pace through the struggling and idling crowds. It was the most crowded hour of the day; the native town was wide awake. Camels laden with immense burdens of sugar-canes brushed the foot passengers almost off the narrow sideway; small boys, with large black eyes and small white takiyehs, darted in and out with brass trays piled high with little enamelled glass bowls.
Michael longed to close his ears with his fingers, but had he attempted to do so, a donkey, carrying terracotta water-jars of an ancient and unpractical shape, or a portly, high-stomached Turk would assuredly have robbed him of his balance.
He drifted on in a semi-conscious state of all that was going on around him, hating the noise, but enjoying every now and then the feast of colour which some group of strangely-mixed races presented. More than once, in the midst of all this noise and clamour, he saw a devout Moslem alone with his God. Before all the world, he was praying in absolute solitude. His mind had created perfect silence.