"Am I dreaming?" he asked himself again and again, as one by one his thoughts rolled over him like tempestuous waves.
The first thing he saw clearly was that Ishmael was not now the same man that he had known at Alexandria; that the anxieties, responsibilities, and sufferings he had gone through as a religious leader had dissipated his strong common sense; and that as a consequence the caution whereby men guard their conduct had gone.
He also saw that Ishmael's spiritual ecstasy had reached a point not far removed from madness; that his faith in divine guidance, divine guardianship, divine intervention had become an absolute obsession.
Therefore it was hopeless to try to move him from his purpose by any appeals on the score of danger to himself or to his people.
"He is determined to go into Cairo," thought Gordon, "and into Cairo he will go."
The next thing Gordon saw, as he examined the situation before him, was that Helena was powerless to undo the work which by the cruel error of fate she had been led to do; that her act was irrevocable; that there was no calling it back, and that it would go from its consequences to the consequences of its consequences.
Helena's face appeared to him, and his heart bled for her as he thought of how she passed before him—she who had always been so bold and gay—with her once proud head bent low. He remembered her former strength and self-reliance; her natural force and grace; her fearless daring and that dash of devilry which had been for him one of her greatest charms; and then he thought of her false position in that house, brought there by her own will, held there by her own act—a tragic figure of a woman in the meshes of her own net.
"She cannot continue to live like this. It is impossible. Yet what can the end be?" he asked himself.
Hours passed like this. His head under his hot hands burned and his temples throbbed, yet no ray of light emerged from the darkness surrounding him.
But at length the man in him, the soldier and the lover, swept down every obstacle, and he told himself that he must save Helena from the consequences of her own conduct whatever the result might be.