And now, at the end of his pilgrimage, if he did not accept the idea that he was in very fact the Redeemer who was to bring in the golden age, the Kingdom of God, he succumbed to a delusion that was nearly akin to it—that just as the lord of the Christians, being condemned by the Roman Governor, had permitted another to take his form and face and bodily presence and to die on the cross instead of him, so the Messiah, the Mahdi, the Christ who was to come, was now using him as His substitute to lead and control His poor, oppressed, and helpless people until the time came for Him to appear in His own person.
Such was the operation of the force that had made Ishmael more of a mystic; and the force that had made him more of a man had been playing in the same way upon his heart.
It had played upon him through Helena.
When Helena entered into his life and he betrothed himself to her, he honestly believed that he was doing no more than protecting her good name. For some time afterwards he continued to deceive himself, but the constant presence of a beautiful woman by his side produced its effect, and little by little he came to know that his heart was touched.
As soon as he became conscious of this he remembered the vow he had made when his Coptic slave-wife died, that no other woman should take her place, and he also reminded himself of his mission, his consecration to the welfare of humanity. But the more he tried to crush his affection for Helena, the more it grew.
He was like a boy in the first beautiful morning light of love. The moment he was alone, after parting from Helena at the door of her sleeping-room, he would kiss the hand that had touched her hand, and find a tingling joy in stepping afresh over the places on which her feet had trod. A glance from her beaming eyes made his pulse beat rapidly, and when, one day, he saw her combing out her hair, with her round white arm bare to the elbow, his breathing came quick and loud.
His passion was like a flower which had sprung up in the parched place of the desert of his desolate soul, and everything that Helena did seemed to water it. Reading her conduct by the only light he had, he thought she loved him. Had she not followed him from India, breaking from her own people to live by his side? Had she not betrothed herself to him without a thought of any other than spiritual joys?
Her pride in him, too, was no less than her affection. Had she not proposed that he should go into Cairo in advance, because that being the place of the greatest danger was the place of highest honour also? In her womanly jealousy for her husband's rank, had she not resisted and resented the substitution of another when it was decided by the Sheikhs that "Omar" should go instead? And, notwithstanding her illness at Khartoum, had she not insisted on following him across the desert and, weak as she was, enduring the pains of his pilgrimage in order to continue by his side?
Allah bless and cherish her! Was there anything in the world so good as a sweet, unselfish, devoted woman?
During the journey Ishmael's love for Helena grew hour by hour until it filled his whole being, and made his wild heart a globe of infinite radiance and hope. Her beauty, her gifts of mind as well as of body, took complete possession of him. Whenever he saw her, everything brightened up. Whenever he turned on his camel, and caught sight of her dromedary at the tail of the caravan, he became excited. Whenever evil things befell, he had only to think of the Rani and his troubles died away. All that was good and beautiful in the world seemed to centre in the litter that held her by day and in the tent that covered her by night.