"How much have you been out of Egypt?" she asked him.
"Not very much. I have been three times to Naples in the hot weather. My father had a villa at Posilipo. I have been with my father to Vichy. I have been four times to Paris. I have been to Constantinople, and I have travelled in Syria."
"Did you go to Palestine?"
"Jerusalem—no. That is for Copts!"
He spoke with disdain. Then he added, with a sort of calm pride and a certain accession of dignity:
"I have been, of course, to Mecca."
"The real man—is he to be found in his religion?"
The thought came to her, and again she—she of all women! How strange that was!—felt the fascination of his faith.
"To Mecca!" she said.
Men passed through deserts to reach the holy places. Nigel one evening had told her something of that journey, and she had felt rather bored. Now she looked at a pilgrim who had gone with the Sacred Carpet, and she was bored no longer.