“The plot thickens. It was a great hour when I ran across you, Aleck Craig. When do you think you saw Samson’s Georgian wife, and where?”
“In this street of Cairo, to-night. Plainly, Claude, that was why I was so anxious to learn if you had seen the face of the fortune teller.”
At this the nomad assumes an attitude that is a revelation concerning his ability as an actor. Strange that the world failed to properly appreciate him.
“Great Scott! you don’t mean it—and the pasha—— Why, I’m already half convinced. He suspected—but see here, how could it be that Marda living would appear dead all these years? Incredible!”
“I admit it seems so, and yet perhaps if we knew what Samson Cereal knows, deep down in his heart, we might find it easier to believe. It is a matter of speculation with me, but if you stop and think for a moment you can understand how difficult it would be for happiness to follow such a marriage—he, a progressive American with all the ideas we claim, she born and reared under the blighting influence of Eastern customs. I can readily imagine a quarrel arising and she fleeing back to the sunny land of her birth.”
“What! leaving her child behind?”
“Quite likely. This is theory. When I learn some facts we can see how near I was to being right.”
“Well, continue the theory: why does she come to the land of ice again—the country from which she fled years and years ago?”
Aleck shrugs his shoulders.
“Ask me something easy. Put the question to one of the Sandwich Islanders or a Hottentot. Perhaps she has been drawn by the mother love to see her child again, for that affection is not confined to any class. The lioness will fight for her whelps. Putting speculation aside, Claude, I am ready to swear that the face of this veiled prophetess was very like that of Dorothy. I was struck dumb by the resemblance. At first I had a positive notion it was she. Then I gradually realized that such a thing was too improbable, and while we walked along my mind evolved the theory which I have given you.”