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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Weavers, by Gilbert Parker, Complete
+#94 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
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+Title: The Weavers, Complete
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6267]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on November 14, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
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+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WEAVERS, BY PARKER, ENTIRE ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WEAVERS
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+BOOK I
+I.        AS THE SPIRIT MOVED
+II.       THE GATES OF THE WORLD
+III.      BANISHED
+IV.       THE CALL
+
+BOOK II
+
+V.        THE WIDER WAY
+VI.       "HAST THOU NEVER BILLED A MANY"
+VII.      THE COMPACT
+VIII.     FOR HIS SOUL'S SAKE AND THE LAND'S SAKE
+IX.       THE LETTER, THE NIGHT, AND THE WOMAN
+X.        THE FOUR WHO KNEW
+XI.       AGAINST THE HOUR OF MIDNIGHT
+XII.      THE JEHAD AND THE LIONS
+XIII.     ACHMET THE ROPEMAKER STRIKES
+XIV.      BEYOND THE PALE
+
+BOOK III
+XV.       SOOLSBY'S HAND UPON THE CURTAIN
+XVI.      THE DEBT AND THE ACCOUNTING
+XVII.     THE WOMAN OF THE CROSS-ROADS
+XVIII.    TIME, THE IDOL-BREAKER
+XIX.      SHARPER THAN A SWORD
+XX.       EACH AFTER HIS OWN ORDER
+XXI.      "THERE IS NOTHING HIDDEN WHICH SHALL NOT BE REVEALED"
+XXII.     AS IN A GLASS DARKLY
+XXIII.    THE TENTS OF CUSHAN
+XXIV.     THE QUESTIONER
+XXV.      THE VOICE THROUGH THE DOOR
+XXVI.     "I OWE YOU NOTHING"
+XXVII.    THE AWAKENING
+
+BOOK IV
+XXVIII.   NAHOUM TURNS THE SCREW
+XXIX.     THE RECOIL
+XXX.      LACEY MOVES
+XXXI.     THE STRUGGLE IN THE DESERT
+XXXII.    FORTY STRIPES SAVE ONE
+XXXIII.   THE DARK INDENTURE
+XXXIV.    NAHOUM DROPS THE MASK
+
+BOOK V
+XXXV.     THE FLIGHT OF THE WOUNDED
+XXXVI.    "IS IT ALWAYS SO-IN LIFE?"
+XXXVII.   THE FLYING SHUTTLE
+XXXVIII.  JASPER KIMBER SPEAKS
+XXXIX.    FAITH JOURNEYS TO LONDON
+
+BOOK VI
+XL.       HYLDA SEEKS NAHOUM
+XLI.      IN THE LAND OF SHINAR
+XLII.     THE LOOM OF DESTINY
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+When I turn over the hundreds of pages of this book, I have a feeling
+that I am looking upon something for which I have no particular
+responsibility, though it has a strange contour of familiarity.  It is as
+though one looks upon a scene in which one had lived and moved, with the
+friendly yet half-distant feeling that it once was one's own possession
+but is so no longer.  I should think the feeling to be much like that of
+the old man whose sons, gone to distant places, have created their own
+plantations of life and have themselves become the masters of
+possessions.  Also I suppose that when I read the story through again
+from the first page to the last, I shall recreate the feeling in which
+I lived when I wrote it, and it will become a part of my own identity
+again.  That distance between himself and his work, however, which
+immediately begins to grow as soon as a book leaves the author's hands
+for those of the public, is a thing which, I suppose, must come to one
+who produces a work of the imagination.  It is no doubt due to the fact
+that every piece of art which has individuality and real likeness to the
+scenes and character it is intended to depict is done in a kind of
+trance.  The author, in effect, self-hypnotises himself, has created
+an atmosphere which is separate and apart from that of his daily
+surroundings, and by virtue of his imagination becomes absorbed in that
+atmosphere.  When the book is finished and it goes forth, when the
+imagination is relaxed and the concentration of mind is withdrawn, the
+atmosphere disappears, and then.  One experiences what I feel when I take
+up 'The Weavers' and, in a sense, wonder how it was done, such as it is.
+
+The frontispiece of the English edition represents a scene in the House
+of Commons, and this brings to my mind a warning which was given me
+similar to that on my entering new fields outside the one in which I
+first made a reputation in fiction.  When, in a certain year, I
+determined that I would enter the House of Commons I had many friends
+who, in effect, wailed and gnashed their teeth.  They said that it would
+be the death of my imaginative faculties; that I should never write
+anything any more; that all the qualities which make literature living
+and compelling would disappear.  I thought this was all wrong then, and I
+know it is all wrong now.  Political life does certainly interfere with
+the amount of work which an author may produce.  He certainly cannot
+write a book every year and do political work as well, but if he does not
+attempt to do the two things on the same days, as it were, but in blocks
+of time devoted to each separately and respectively, he will only find,
+as I have found, that public life  the conflict of it, the accompanying
+attrition of mind, the searching for the things which will solve the
+problems of national life, the multitudinous variations of character with
+which one comes in contact, the big issues suddenly sprung upon the
+congregation of responsible politicians, all are stimulating to the
+imagination, invigorating to the mind, and marvellously freshening to
+every literary instinct.  No danger to the writer lies in doing political
+work, if it does not sap his strength and destroy his health.  Apart from
+that, he should not suffer.  The very spirit of statesmanship is
+imagination, vision; and the same quality which enables an author to
+realise humanity for a book is necessary for him to realise humanity in
+the crowded chamber of a Parliament.
+
+So far as I can remember, whatever was written of The Weavers, no critic
+said that it lacked imagination.  Some critics said it was too crowded
+with incident; that there was enough incident in it for two novels; some
+said that the sweep was too wide, but no critic of authority declared
+that the book lacked vision or the vivacity of a living narrative.  It is
+not likely that I shall ever write again a novel of Egypt, but I have
+made my contribution to Anglo-Egyptian literature, and I do not think I
+failed completely in showing the greatness of soul which enabled one man
+to keep the torch of civilisation, of truth, justice, and wholesome love
+alight in surroundings as offensive to civilisation as was Egypt in the
+last days of Ismail Pasha--a time which could be well typified by the
+words put by Bulwer Lytton in the mouth of Cardinal Richelieu:
+
+              "I found France rent asunder,
+               Sloth in the mart and schism in the temple;
+               Broils festering to rebellion; and weak laws
+               Rotting away with rust in antique sheaths.
+               I have re-created France; and, from the ashes
+               Of the old feudal and decrepit carcase,
+               Civilisation on her luminous wings
+               Soars, phoenix-like, to Jove!"
+
+Critics and readers have endeavoured to identify the main characteristics
+of The Weavers with figures in Anglo-Egyptian and official public life.
+David Claridge was, however, a creature of the imagination.  It has been
+said that he was drawn from General Gordon.  I am not conscious of having
+taken Gordon for David's prototype, though, as I was saturated with all
+that had been written about Gordon, there is no doubt that something of
+that great man may have found its way into the character of David
+Claridge.  The true origin of David Claridge, however, may be found in a
+short story called 'All the World's Mad', in Donovan Pasha, which was
+originally published by Lady Randolph Churchill in an ambitious but
+defunct magazine called 'The Anglo-Saxon Review'.  The truth is that
+David Claridge had his origin in a fairly close understanding of, and
+interest in, Quaker life.  I had Quaker relatives through the marriage of
+a connection of my mother, and the original of Benn Claridge, the uncle
+of David, is still alive, a very old man, who in my boyhood days wore the
+broad brim and the straight preacher-like coat of the old-fashioned
+Quaker.  The grandmother of my wife was also a Quaker, and used the
+"thee" and "thou" until the day of her death.
+
+Here let me say that criticism came to me from several quarters both in
+England and America on the use of these words thee and thou, and
+statements were made that the kind of speech which I put into David
+Claridge's mouth was not Quaker speech.  For instance, they would not
+have it that a Quaker would say, "Thee will go with me"--as though they
+were ashamed of the sweet inaccuracy of the objective pronoun being used
+in the nominative; but hundreds of times I have myself heard Quakers use
+"thee" in just such a way in England and America.  The facts are,
+however, that Quakers differ extensively in their habits, and there grew
+up in England among the Quakers in certain districts a sense of shame
+for false grammar which, to say the least, was very childish.  To be
+deliberately and boldly ungrammatical, when you serve both euphony and
+simplicity, is merely to give archaic charm, not to be guilty of an
+offence.  I have friends in Derbyshire who still say "Thee thinks,"
+etc., and I must confess that the picture of a Quaker rampant over my
+deliberate use of this well-authenticated form of speech produced to my
+mind only the effect of an infuriated sheep, when I remembered the
+peaceful attribute of Quaker life and character.  From another quarter
+came the assurance that I was wrong when I set up a tombstone with a name
+upon it in a Quaker graveyard.  I received a sarcastic letter from a lady
+on the borders of Sussex and Surrey upon this point, and I immediately
+sent her a first-class railway ticket to enable her to visit the Quaker
+churchyard at Croydon, in Surrey, where dead and gone Quakers have
+tombstones by the score, and inscriptions on them also.  It is a good
+thing to be accurate; it is desperately essential in a novel.  The
+average reader, in his triumph at discovering some slight error of
+detail, would consign a masterpiece of imagination, knowledge of life
+and character to the rubbish-heap.
+
+I believe that 'The Weavers' represents a wider outlook of life, closer
+understanding of the problems which perplex society, and a clearer view
+of the verities than any previous book written by me, whatever its
+popularity may have been.  It appealed to the British public rather more
+than 'The Right of Way', and the great public of America and the Oversea
+Dominions gave it a welcome which enabled it to take its place beside
+'The Right of Way', the success of which was unusual.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+This book is not intended to be an historical novel, nor are its
+characters meant to be identified with well-known persons connected with
+the history of England or of Egypt; but all that is essential in the tale
+is based upon, and drawn from, the life of both countries.  Though Egypt
+has greatly changed during the past generation, away from Cairo and the
+commercial centres the wheels of social progress have turned but slowly,
+and much remains as it was in the days of which this book is a record in
+the spirit of the life, at least.
+                                             G. P.
+
+
+
+
+          "Dost thou spread the sail, throw the spear, swing the axe, lay
+          thy hand upon the plough, attend the furnace door, shepherd the
+          sheep upon the hills, gather corn from the field, or smite the
+          rock in the quarry?  Yet, whatever thy task, thou art even as
+          one who twists the thread and throws the shuttle, weaving the
+          web of Life.  Ye are all weavers, and Allah the Merciful, does
+          He not watch beside the loom?"
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+AS THE SPIRIT MOVED
+
+The village lay in a valley which had been the bed of a great river in
+the far-off days when Ireland, Wales and Brittany were joined together
+and the Thames flowed into the Seine.  The place had never known turmoil
+or stir.  For generations it had lived serenely.
+
+Three buildings in the village stood out insistently, more by the
+authority of their appearance and position than by their size.  One was a
+square, red-brick mansion in the centre of the village, surrounded by a
+high, redbrick wall enclosing a garden.  Another was a big, low, graceful
+building with wings.  It had once been a monastery.  It was covered with
+ivy, which grew thick and hungry upon it, and it was called the
+Cloistered House.  The last of the three was of wood, and of no great
+size--a severely plain but dignified structure, looking like some
+council-hall of a past era.  Its heavy oak doors and windows with diamond
+panes, and its air of order, cleanliness and serenity, gave it a
+commanding influence in the picture.  It was the key to the history of
+the village--a Quaker Meeting-house.
+
+Involuntarily the village had built itself in such a way that it made a
+wide avenue from the common at one end to the Meeting-house on the gorse-
+grown upland at the other.  With a demure resistance to the will of its
+makers the village had made itself decorative.  The people were
+unconscious of any attractiveness in themselves or in their village.
+There were, however, a few who felt the beauty stirring around them.
+These few, for their knowledge and for the pleasure which it brought,
+paid the accustomed price.  The records of their lives were the only
+notable history of the place since the days when their forefathers
+suffered for the faith.
+
+One of these was a girl--for she was still but a child when she died;
+and she had lived in the Red Mansion with the tall porch, the wide garden
+behind, and the wall of apricots and peaches and clustering grapes.  Her
+story was not to cease when she was laid away in the stiff graveyard
+behind the Meeting-house.  It was to go on in the life of her son, whom
+to bring into the world she had suffered undeserved, and loved with a
+passion more in keeping with the beauty of the vale in which she lived
+than with the piety found on the high-backed seats in the Quaker Meeting-
+house.  The name given her on the register of death was Mercy Claridge,
+and a line beneath said that she was the daughter of Luke Claridge, that
+her age at passing was nineteen years, and that "her soul was with the
+Lord."
+
+Another whose life had given pages to the village history was one of
+noble birth, the Earl of Eglington.  He had died twenty years after the
+time when Luke Claridge, against the then custom of the Quakers, set up a
+tombstone to Mercy Claridge's memory behind the Meeting-house.  Only
+thrice in those twenty years had he slept in a room of the Cloistered
+House.  One of those occasions was the day on which Luke Claridge put up
+the grey stone in the graveyard, three years after his daughter's death.
+On the night of that day these two men met face to face in the garden of
+the Cloistered House.  It was said by a passer-by, who had involuntarily
+overheard, that Luke Claridge had used harsh and profane words to Lord
+Eglington, though he had no inkling of the subject of the bitter talk.
+He supposed, however, that Luke had gone to reprove the other for a
+wasteful and wandering existence; for desertion of that Quaker religion
+to which his grandfather, the third Earl of Eglington, had turned in the
+second half of his life, never visiting his estates in Ireland, and
+residing here among his new friends to his last day.  This listener--John
+Fairley was his name--kept his own counsel.  On two other occasions had
+Lord Eglington visited the Cloistered House in the years that passed, and
+remained many months.  Once he brought his wife and child.  The former
+was a cold, blue-eyed Saxon of an old family, who smiled distantly upon
+the Quaker village; the latter, a round-headed, warm-faced youth, with a
+bold, menacing eye, who probed into this and that, rushed here and there
+as did his father; now built a miniature mill; now experimented at some
+peril in the laboratory which had been arranged in the Cloistered House
+for scientific experiments; now shot partridges in the fields where
+partridges had not been shot for years; and was as little in the picture
+as his adventurous father, though he wore a broad-brimmed hat, smiling
+the while at the pain it gave to the simple folk around him.
+
+And yet once more the owner of the Cloistered House returned alone.  The
+blue-eyed lady was gone to her grave; the youth was abroad.  This time he
+came to die.  He was found lying on the floor of his laboratory with a
+broken retort in fragments beside him.  With his servant, Luke Claridge
+was the first to look upon him lying in the wreck of his last experiment,
+a spirit-lamp still burning above him, in the grey light of a winter's
+morning.  Luke Claridge closed the eyes, straightened the body, and
+crossed the hands over the breast which had been the laboratory of many
+conflicting passions of life.
+
+The dead man had left instructions that his body should be buried in the
+Quaker graveyard, but Luke Claridge and the Elders prevented that--he had
+no right to the privileges of a Friend; and, as the only son was afar,
+and no near relatives pressed the late Earl's wishes, the ancient family
+tomb in Ireland received all that was left of the owner of the Cloistered
+House, which, with the estates in Ireland and the title, passed to the
+wandering son.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE GATES OF THE WORLD
+
+Stillness in the Meeting-house, save for the light swish of one
+graveyard-tree against the window-pane, and the slow breathing of the
+Quaker folk who filled every corner.  On the long bench at the upper end
+of the room the Elders sat motionless, their hands on their knees,
+wearing their hats; the women in their poke-bonnets kept their gaze upon
+their laps.  The heads of all save three were averted, and they were Luke
+Claridge, his only living daughter, called Faith, and his dead daughter's
+son David, who kept his eyes fixed on the window where the twig flicked
+against the pane.  The eyes of Faith, who sat on a bench at one side,
+travelled from David to her father constantly; and if, once or twice, the
+plain rebuke of Luke Claridge's look compelled her eyes upon her folded
+hands, still she was watchful and waiting, and seemed demurely to defy
+the convention of unblinking silence.  As time went on, others of her sex
+stole glances at Mercy's son from the depths of their bonnets; and at
+last, after over an hour, they and all were drawn to look steadily at the
+young man upon whose business this Meeting of Discipline had been called.
+The air grew warmer and warmer, but no one became restless; all seemed as
+cool of face and body as the grey gowns and coats with grey steel buttons
+which they wore.
+
+At last a shrill voice broke the stillness.  Raising his head, one of the
+Elders said: "Thee will stand up, friend."  He looked at David.
+
+With a slight gesture of relief the young man stood up.  He was good to
+look at-clean-shaven, broad of brow, fine of figure, composed of
+carriage, though it was not the composure of the people by whom he was
+surrounded.  They were dignified, he was graceful; they were consistently
+slow of movement, but at times his quick gestures showed that he had not
+been able to train his spirit to that passiveness by which he lived
+surrounded.  Their eyes were slow and quiet, more meditative than
+observant; his were changeful in expression, now abstracted, now dark and
+shining as though some inner fire was burning.  The head, too, had a
+habit of coming up quickly with an almost wilful gesture, and with an air
+which, in others, might have been called pride.
+
+"What is thy name?" said another owl-like Elder to him.
+
+A gentle, half-amused smile flickered at the young man's lips for an
+instant, then, "David Claridge--still," he answered.
+
+His last word stirred the meeting.  A sort of ruffle went through the
+atmosphere, and now every eye was fixed and inquiring.  The word was
+ominous.  He was there on his trial, and for discipline; and it was
+thought by all that, as many days had passed since his offence was
+committed, meditation and prayer should have done their work.  Now,
+however, in the tone of his voice, as it clothed the last word, there was
+something of defiance.  On the ear of his grandfather, Luke Claridge, it
+fell heavily.  The old man's lips closed tightly, he clasped his hands
+between his knees with apparent self-repression.
+
+The second Elder who had spoken was he who had once heard Luke Claridge
+use profane words in the Cloistered House.  Feeling trouble ahead, and
+liking the young man and his brother Elder, Luke Claridge, John Fairley
+sought now to take the case into his own hands.
+
+"Thee shall never find a better name, David," he said, "if thee live a
+hundred years.  It hath served well in England.  This thee didst do.
+While the young Earl of Eglington was being brought home, with noise and
+brawling, after his return to Parliament, thee mingled among the
+brawlers; and because some evil words were said of thy hat and thy
+apparel, thee laid about thee, bringing one to the dust, so that his life
+was in peril for some hours to come.  Jasper Kimber was his name."
+
+"Were it not that the smitten man forgave thee, thee would now be in a
+prison cell," shrilly piped the Elder who had asked his name.
+
+"The fight was fair," was the young man's reply.  "Though I am a Friend,
+the man was English."
+
+"Thee was that day a son of Belial," rejoined the shrill Elder.  "Thee
+did use thy hands like any heathen sailor--is it not the truth?"
+
+"I struck the man.  I punished him--why enlarge?"
+
+"Thee is guilty?"
+
+"I did the thing."
+
+"That is one charge against thee.  There are others.  Thee was seen to
+drink of spirits in a public-house at Heddington that day.  Twice--
+thrice, like any drunken collier."
+
+"Twice," was the prompt correction.
+
+There was a moment's pause, in which some women sighed and others folded
+and unfolded their hands on their laps; the men frowned.
+
+"Thee has been a dark deceiver," said the shrill Elder again, and with a
+ring of acrid triumph; "thee has hid these things from our eyes many
+years, but in one day thee has uncovered all.  Thee--"
+
+"Thee is charged," interposed Elder Fairley, "with visiting a play this
+same day, and with seeing a dance of Spain following upon it."
+
+"I did not disdain the music," said the young man drily; "the flute, of
+all instruments, has a mellow sound."  Suddenly his eyes darkened, he
+became abstracted, and gazed at the window where the twig flicked softly
+against the pane, and the heat of summer palpitated in the air.  "It has
+good grace to my ear," he added slowly.
+
+Luke Claridge looked at him intently.  He began to realize that there
+were forces stirring in his grandson which had no beginning in Claridge
+blood, and were not nurtured in the garden with the fruited wall.  He was
+not used to problems; he had only a code, which he had rigidly kept.  He
+had now a glimmer of something beyond code or creed.
+
+He saw that the shrill Elder was going to speak.  He intervened.  "Thee
+is charged, David," he said coldly, "with kissing a woman--a stranger and
+a wanton--where the four roads meet 'twixt here and yonder town."  He
+motioned towards the hills.
+
+"In the open day," added the shrill Elder, a red spot burning on each
+withered cheek.
+
+"The woman was comely," said the young man, with a tone of irony,
+recovering an impassive look.
+
+A strange silence fell, the women looked down; yet they seemed not so
+confounded as the men.  After a moment they watched the young man with
+quicker flashes of the eye.
+
+"The answer is shameless," said the shrill Elder.  "Thy life is that of a
+carnal hypocrite."
+
+The young man said nothing.  His face had become very pale, his lips were
+set, and presently he sat down and folded his arms.
+
+"Thee is guilty of all?" asked John Fairley.
+
+His kindly eye was troubled, for he had spent numberless hours in this
+young man's company, and together they had read books of travel and
+history, and even the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe, though drama was
+anathema to the Society of Friends--they did not realize it in the life
+around them.  That which was drama was either the visitation of God or
+the dark deeds of man, from which they must avert their eyes.  Their own
+tragedies they hid beneath their grey coats and bodices; their dirty
+linen they never washed in public, save in the scandal such as this where
+the Society must intervene.  Then the linen was not only washed, but duly
+starched, sprinkled, and ironed.
+
+"I have answered all.  Judge by my words," said David gravely.
+
+"Has repentance come to thee?  Is it thy will to suffer that which we may
+decide for thy correction?" It was Elder Fairley who spoke.  He was
+determined to control the meeting and to influence its judgment.  He
+loved the young man.
+
+David made no reply; he seemed lost in thought.  "Let the discipline
+proceed--he hath an evil spirit," said the shrill Elder.
+
+"His childhood lacked in much," said Elder Fairley patiently.
+
+To most minds present the words carried home--to every woman who had a
+child, to every man who had lost a wife and had a motherless son.  This
+much they knew of David's real history, that Mercy Claridge, his mother,
+on a visit to the house of an uncle at Portsmouth, her mother's brother,
+had eloped with and was duly married to the captain of a merchant ship.
+They also knew that, after some months, Luke Claridge had brought her
+home; and that before her child was born news came that the ship her
+husband sailed had gone down with all on board.  They knew likewise that
+she had died soon after David came, and that her father, Luke Claridge,
+buried her in her maiden name, and brought the boy up as his son, not
+with his father's name but bearing that name so long honoured in England,
+and even in the far places of the earth--for had not Benn Claridge,
+Luke's brother, been a great carpet-merchant, traveller, and explorer in
+Asia Minor, Egypt, and the Soudan--Benn Claridge of the whimsical speech,
+the pious life?  All this they knew; but none of them, to his or her
+knowledge, had ever seen David's father.  He was legendary; though there
+was full proof that the girl had been duly married.  That had been laid
+before the Elders by Luke Claridge on an occasion when Benn Claridge, his
+brother was come among them again from the East.
+
+At this moment of trial David was thinking of his uncle, Benn Claridge,
+and of his last words fifteen years before when going once again to the
+East, accompanied by the Muslim chief Ebn Ezra, who had come with him to
+England on the business of his country.  These were Benn Claridge's
+words: "Love God before all, love thy fellow-man, and thy conscience will
+bring thee safe home, lad."
+
+"If he will not repent, there is but one way," said the shrill Elder.
+
+"Let there be no haste," said Luke Claridge, in a voice that shook a
+little in his struggle for self-control.
+
+Another heretofore silent Elder, sitting beside John Fairley, exchanged
+words in a whisper with him, and then addressed them.  He was a very
+small man with a very high stock and spreading collar, a thin face, and
+large wide eyes.  He kept his chin down in his collar, but spoke at the
+ceiling like one blind, though his eyes were sharp enough on occasion.
+His name was Meacham.
+
+"It is meet there shall be time for sorrow and repentance," he said.
+"This, I pray you all, be our will: that for three months David live
+apart, even in the hut where lived the drunken chair-maker ere he
+disappeared and died, as rumour saith--it hath no tenant.  Let it be that
+after to-morrow night at sunset none shall speak to him till that time be
+come, the first day of winter.  Till that day he shall speak to no man,
+and shall be despised of the world, and--pray God--of himself.  Upon the
+first day of winter let it be that he come hither again and speak with
+us."
+
+On the long stillness of assent that followed there came a voice across
+the room, from within a grey-and-white bonnet, which shadowed a delicate
+face shining with the flame of the spirit within.  It was the face of
+Faith Claridge, the sister of the woman in the graveyard, whose soul was
+"with the Lord," though she was but one year older and looked much
+younger than her nephew, David.
+
+"Speak, David," she said softly.  "Speak now.  Doth not the spirit move
+thee?"
+
+She gave him his cue, for he had of purpose held his peace till all had
+been said; and he had come to say some things which had been churning in
+his mind too long.  He caught the faint cool sarcasm in her tone, and
+smiled unconsciously at her last words.  She, at least, must have reasons
+for her faith in him, must have grounds for his defence in painful days
+to come; for painful they must be, whether he stayed to do their will, or
+went into the fighting world where Quakers were few and life composite of
+things they never knew in Hamley.
+
+He got to his feet and clasped his hands behind his back.  After an
+instant he broke silence.
+
+"All those things of which I am accused, I did; and for them is asked
+repentance.  Before that day on which I did these things was there
+complaint, or cause for it?  Was my life evil?  Did I think in secret
+that which might not be done openly?  Well, some things I did secretly.
+Ye shall hear of them.  I read where I might, and after my taste, many
+plays, and found in them beauty and the soul of deep things.  Tales I
+have read, but a few, and John Milton, and Chaucer, and Bacon, and
+Montaigne, and Arab poets also, whose books my uncle sent me.  Was this
+sin in me?"
+
+"It drove to a day of shame for thee," said the shrill Elder.
+
+He took no heed, but continued: "When I was a child I listened to the
+lark as it rose from the meadow; and I hid myself in the hedge that,
+unseen, I might hear it sing; and at night I waited till I could hear the
+nightingale.  I have heard the river singing, and the music of the trees.
+At first I thought that this must be sin, since ye condemn the human
+voice that sings, but I could feel no guilt.  I heard men and women sing
+upon the village green, and I sang also.  I heard bands of music.  One
+instrument seemed to me more than all the rest.  I bought one like it,
+and learned to play.  It was the flute--its note so soft and pleasant.
+I learned to play it--years ago--in the woods of Beedon beyond the hill,
+and I have felt no guilt from then till now.  For these things I have no
+repentance."
+
+"Thee has had good practice in deceit," said the shrill Elder.
+
+Suddenly David's manner changed.  His voice became deeper; his eyes took
+on that look of brilliance and heat which had given Luke Claridge anxious
+thoughts.
+
+"I did, indeed, as the spirit moved me, even as ye have done."
+
+"Blasphemer, did the spirit move thee to brawl and fight, to drink and
+curse, to kiss a wanton in the open road?  What hath come upon thee?"
+Again it was the voice of the shrill Elder.
+
+"Judge me by the truth I speak," he answered.  "Save in these things my
+life has been an unclasped book for all to read."
+
+"Speak to the charge of brawling and drink, David," rejoined the little
+Elder Meacham with the high collar and gaze upon the ceiling.
+
+"Shall I not speak when I am moved?  Ye have struck swiftly; I will draw
+the arrow slowly from the wound.  But, in truth, ye had good right to
+wound.  Naught but kindness have I had among you all; and I will answer.
+Straightly have I lived since my birth.  Yet betimes a torturing unrest
+of mind was used to come upon me as I watched the world around us.  I saw
+men generous to their kind, industrious and brave, beloved by their
+fellows; and I have seen these same men drink and dance and give
+themselves to coarse, rough play like young dogs in a kennel.  Yet, too,
+I have seen dark things done in drink--the cheerful made morose, the
+gentle violent.  What was the temptation?  What the secret?  Was it but
+the low craving of the flesh, or was it some primitive unrest, or craving
+of the soul, which, clouded and baffled by time and labour and the wear
+of life, by this means was given the witched medicament--a false freedom,
+a thrilling forgetfulness?  In ancient days the high, the humane, in
+search of cure for poison, poisoned themselves, and then applied the
+antidote.  He hath little knowledge and less pity for sin who has never
+sinned.  The day came when all these things which other men did in my
+sight I did--openly.  I drank with them in the taverns--twice I drank.
+I met a lass in the way.  I kissed her.  I sat beside her at the roadside
+and she told me her brief, sad, evil story.  One she had loved had left
+her.  She was going to London.  I gave her what money I had--"
+
+"And thy watch," said a whispering voice from the Elders' bench.
+
+"Even so.  And at the cross-roads I bade her goodbye with sorrow."
+
+"There were those who saw," said the shrill voice from the bench.
+
+"They saw what I have said--no more.  I had never tasted spirits in my
+life.  I had never kissed a woman's lips.  Till then I had never struck
+my fellow-man; but before the sun went down I fought the man who drove
+the lass in sorrow into the homeless world.  I did not choose to fight;
+but when I begged the man Jasper Kimber for the girl's sake to follow and
+bring her back, and he railed at me and made to fight me, I took off my
+hat, and there I laid him in the dust."
+
+"No thanks to thee that he did not lie in his grave," observed the shrill
+Elder.
+
+"In truth I hit hard," was the quiet reply.
+
+"How came thee expert with thy fists?" asked Elder Fairley, with the
+shadow of a smile.
+
+"A book I bought from London, a sack of corn, a hollow leather ball, and
+an hour betimes with the drunken chair-maker in the hut by the lime-kiln
+on the hill.  He was once a sailor and a fighting man."
+
+A look of blank surprise ran slowly along the faces of the Elders.  They
+were in a fog of misunderstanding and reprobation.
+
+"While yet my father"--he looked at Luke Claridge, whom he had ever been
+taught to call his father--"shared the great business at Heddington, and
+the ships came from Smyrna and Alexandria, I had some small duties, as is
+well known.  But that ceased, and there was little to do.  Sports are
+forbidden among us here, and my body grew sick, because the mind had no
+labour.  The world of work has thickened round us beyond the hills.  The
+great chimneys rise in a circle as far as eye can see on yonder crests;
+but we slumber and sleep."
+
+"Enough, enough," said a voice from among the women.  "Thee has a friend
+gone to London--thee knows the way.  It leads from the cross-roads!"
+
+Faith Claridge, who had listened to David's speech, her heart panting,
+her clear grey eyes--she had her mother's eyes--fixed benignly on him,
+turned to the quarter whence the voice came.  Seeing who it was--a widow
+who, with no demureness, had tried without avail to bring Luke Claridge
+to her--her lips pressed together in a bitter smile, and she said to her
+nephew clearly:
+
+"Patience Spielman hath little hope of thee, David.  Hope hath died in
+her."
+
+A faint, prim smile passed across the faces of all present, for all knew
+Faith's allusion, and it relieved the tension of the past half-hour.
+From the first moment David began to speak he had commanded his hearers.
+His voice was low and even; but it had also a power which, when put to
+sudden quiet use, compelled the hearer to an almost breathless silence,
+not so much to the meaning of the words, but to the tone itself, to the
+man behind it.  His personal force was remarkable.  Quiet and pale
+ordinarily, his clear russet-brown hair falling in a wave over his
+forehead, when roused, he seemed like some delicate engine made to do
+great labours.  As Faith said to him once, "David, thee looks as though
+thee could lift great weights lightly."  When roused, his eyes lighted
+like a lamp, the whole man seemed to pulsate.  He had shocked, awed, and
+troubled his listeners.  Yet he had held them in his power, and was
+master of their minds.  The interjections had but given him new means to
+defend himself.  After Faith had spoken he looked slowly round.
+
+"I am charged with being profane," he said.  "I do not remember.  But is
+there none among you who has not secretly used profane words and, neither
+in secret nor openly, has repented?  I am charged with drinking.  On one
+day of my life I drank openly.  I did it because something in me kept
+crying out, 'Taste and see!'  I tasted and saw, and know; and I know that
+oblivion, that brief pitiful respite from trouble, which this evil
+tincture gives.  I drank to know; and I found it lure me into a new
+careless joy.  The sun seemed brighter, men's faces seemed happier, the
+world sang about me, the blood ran swiftly, thoughts swarmed in my brain.
+My feet were on the mountains, my hands were on the sails of great ships;
+I was a conqueror.  I understood the drunkard in the first withdrawal
+begotten of this false stimulant.  I drank to know.  Is there none among
+you who has, though it be but once, drunk secretly as I drank openly?  If
+there be none, then I am condemned."
+
+"Amen," said Elder Fairley's voice from the bench.  "In the open way by
+the cross-roads I saw a woman.  I saw she was in sorrow.  I spoke to her.
+Tears came to her eyes.  I took her hand, and we sat down together.  Of
+the rest I have told you.  I kissed her--a stranger.  She was comely.
+And this I know, that the matter ended by the cross-roads, and that by
+and forbidden paths have easy travel.  I kissed the woman openly--is
+there none among you who has kissed secretly, and has kept the matter
+hidden?  For him I struck and injured, it was fair.  Shall a man be
+beaten like a dog?  Kimber would have beaten me."
+
+"Wherein has it all profited?" asked the shrill Elder querulously.
+
+"I have knowledge.  None shall do these things hereafter but I shall
+understand.  None shall go venturing, exploring, but I shall pray for
+him."
+
+"Thee will break thy heart and thy life exploring," said Luke Claridge
+bitterly.  Experiment in life he did not understand, and even Benn
+Claridge's emigration to far lands had ever seemed to him a monstrous and
+amazing thing, though it ended in the making of a great business in which
+he himself had prospered, and from which he had now retired.  He suddenly
+realized that a day of trouble was at hand with this youth on whom his
+heart doted, and it tortured him that he could not understand.
+
+"By none of these things shall I break my life," was David's answer now.
+
+For a moment he stood still and silent, then all at once he stretched out
+his hands to them.  "All these things I did were against our faith.  I
+desire forgiveness.  I did them out of my own will; I will take up your
+judgment.  If there be no more to say, I will make ready to go to old
+Soolsby's hut on the hill till the set time be passed."
+
+There was a long silence.  Even the shrill Elder's head was buried in
+his breast.  They were little likely to forego his penalty.  There was
+a gentle inflexibility in their natures born of long restraint and
+practised determination.  He must go out into blank silence and
+banishment until the first day of winter.  Yet, recalcitrant as they held
+him, their secret hearts were with him, for there was none of them but
+had had happy commerce with him; and they could think of no more bitter
+punishment than to be cut off from their own society for three months.
+They were satisfied he was being trained back to happiness and honour.
+
+A new turn was given to events, however.  The little wizened Elder
+Meacham said: "The flute, friend--is it here?"
+
+"I have it here," David answered.
+
+"Let us have music, then."
+
+"To what end?" interjected the shrill Elder.
+
+"He hath averred he can play," drily replied the other.  "Let us judge
+whether vanity breeds untruth in him."
+
+The furtive brightening of the eyes in the women was represented in the
+men by an assumed look of abstraction in most; in others by a bland
+assumption of judicial calm.  A few, however, frowned, and would have
+opposed the suggestion, but that curiosity mastered them.  These watched
+with darkening interest the flute, in three pieces, drawn from an inner
+pocket and put together swiftly.
+
+David raised the instrument to his lips, blew one low note, and then a
+little run of notes, all smooth and soft.  Mellowness and a sober
+sweetness were in the tone.  He paused a moment after this, and seemed
+questioning what to play.  And as he stood, the flute in his hands, his
+thoughts took flight to his Uncle Benn, whose kindly, shrewd face and
+sharp brown eyes were as present to him, and more real, than those of
+Luke Claridge, whom he saw every day.  Of late when he had thought of
+his uncle, however, alternate depression and lightness of spirit had
+possessed him.  Night after night he had troubled sleep, and he had
+dreamed again and again that his uncle knocked at his door, or came and
+stood beside his bed and spoke to him.  He had wakened suddenly and said
+"Yes" to a voice which seemed to call to him.
+
+Always his dreams and imaginings settled round his Uncle Benn, until he
+had found himself trying to speak to the little brown man across the
+thousand leagues of land and sea.  He had found, too, in the past that
+when he seemed to be really speaking to his uncle, when it seemed as
+though the distance between them had been annihilated, that soon
+afterwards there came a letter from him.  Yet there had not been more
+than two or three a year.  They had been, however, like books of many
+pages, closely written, in Arabic, in a crabbed characteristic hand, and
+full of the sorrow and grandeur and misery of the East.  How many books
+on the East David had read he would hardly have been able to say; but
+something of the East had entered into him, something of the philosophy
+of Mahomet and Buddha, and the beauty of Omar Khayyam had given a touch
+of colour and intellect to the narrow faith in which he had been
+schooled.  He had found himself replying to a question asked of him in
+Heddington, as to how he knew that there was a God, in the words of a
+Muslim quoted by his uncle: "As I know by the tracks in the sand whether
+a Man or Beast has passed there, so the heaven with its stars, the earth
+with its fruits, show me that God has passed."  Again, in reply to the
+same question, the reply of the same Arab sprang to his lips--"Does the
+Morning want a Light to see it by?"
+
+As he stood with his flute--his fingers now and then caressingly rising
+and falling upon its little caverns, his mind travelled far to those
+regions he had never seen, where his uncle traded, and explored.
+Suddenly, the call he had heard in his sleep now came to him in this
+waking reverie.  His eyes withdrew from the tree at the window, as if
+startled, and he almost called aloud in reply; but he realised where he
+was.  At last, raising the flute to his lips, as the eyes of Luke
+Claridge closed with very trouble, he began to play.
+
+Out in the woods of Beedon he had attuned his flute to the stir of
+leaves, the murmur of streams, the song of birds, the boom and burden of
+storm; and it was soft and deep as the throat of the bell-bird of
+Australian wilds.  Now it was mastered by the dreams he had dreamed of
+the East: the desert skies, high and clear and burning, the desert
+sunsets, plaintive and peaceful and unvaried--one lovely diffusion, in
+which day dies without splendour and in a glow of pain.  The long velvety
+tread of the camel, the song of the camel-driver, the monotonous chant of
+the river-man, with fingers mechanically falling on his little drum, the
+cry of the eagle of the Libyan Hills, the lap of the heavy waters of the
+Dead Sea down by Jericho, the battle-call of the Druses beyond Damascus,
+the lonely gigantic figures at the mouth of the temple of Abou Simbel,
+looking out with the eternal question to the unanswering desert, the
+delicate ruins of moonlit Baalbec, with the snow mountains hovering
+above, the green oases, and the deep wells where the caravans lay down in
+peace--all these were pouring their influences on his mind in the little
+Quaker village of Hamley where life was so bare, so grave.
+
+The music he played was all his own, was instinctively translated from
+all other influences into that which they who listened to him could
+understand.  Yet that sensuous beauty which the Quaker Society was so
+concerned to banish from any part in their life was playing upon them
+now, making the hearts of the women beat fast, thrilling them, turning
+meditation into dreams, and giving the sight of the eyes far visions of
+pleasure.  So powerful was this influence that the shrill Elder twice
+essayed to speak in protest, but was prevented by the wizened Elder
+Meacham.  When it seemed as if the aching, throbbing sweetness must
+surely bring denunciation, David changed the music to a slow mourning
+cadence.  It was a wail of sorrow, a march to the grave, a benediction, a
+soft sound of farewell, floating through the room and dying away into the
+mid-day sun.
+
+There came a long silence after, and David sat with unmoving look upon
+the distant prospect through the window.  A woman's sob broke the air.
+Faith's handkerchief was at her eyes.  Only one quick sob, but it had
+been wrung from her by the premonition suddenly come that the brother--
+he was brother more than nephew--over whom her heart had yearned had,
+indeed, come to the cross-roads, and that their ways would henceforth
+divide.  The punishment or banishment now to be meted out to him was as
+nothing.  It meant a few weeks of disgrace, of ban, of what, in effect,
+was self-immolation, of that commanding justice of the Society which no
+one yet save the late Earl of Eglington had defied.  David could refuse
+to bear punishment, but such a possibility had never occurred to her or
+to any one present.  She saw him taking his punishment as surely as
+though the law of the land had him in its grasp.  It was not that which
+she was fearing.  But she saw him moving out of her life.  To her this
+music was the prelude of her tragedy.
+
+A moment afterwards Luke Claridge arose and spoke to David in austere
+tones: "It is our will that thee begone to the chair-maker's but upon the
+hill till three months be passed, and that none have speech with thee
+after sunset to-morrow even."
+
+"Amen," said all the Elders.
+
+"Amen," said David, and put his flute into his pocket, and rose to go.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+BANISHED
+
+The chair-maker's hut lay upon the north hillside about half-way between
+the Meeting-house at one end of the village and the common at the other
+end.  It commanded the valley, had no house near it, and was sheltered
+from the north wind by the hill-top which rose up behind it a hundred
+feet or more.  No road led to it--only a path up from the green of the
+village, winding past a gulley and the deep cuts of old rivulets now
+over grown by grass or bracken.  It got the sun abundantly, and it was
+protected from the full sweep of any storm.  It had but two rooms, the
+floor was of sanded earth, but it had windows on three sides, east, west,
+and south, and the door looked south.  Its furniture was a plank bed, a
+few shelves, a bench, two chairs, some utensils, a fireplace of stone, a
+picture of the Virgin and Child, and of a cardinal of the Church of Rome
+with a red hat--for the chair-maker had been a Roman Catholic, the only
+one of that communion in Hamley.  Had he been a Protestant his vices
+would have made him anathema, but, being what he was, his fellow-
+villagers had treated him with kindness.
+
+After the half-day in which he was permitted to make due preparations,
+lay in store of provisions, and purchase a few sheep and hens, hither
+came David Claridge.  Here, too, came Faith, who was permitted one hour
+with him before he began his life of willing isolation.  Little was said
+as they made the journey up the hill, driving the sheep before them, four
+strong lads following with necessities--flour, rice, potatoes, and
+suchlike.
+
+Arrived, the goods were deposited inside the hut, the lads were
+dismissed, and David and Faith were left alone.  David looked at his
+watch.  They had still a handful of minutes before the parting.  These
+flew fast, and yet, seated inside the door, and looking down at the
+village which the sun was bathing in the last glowing of evening, they
+remained silent.  Each knew that a great change had come in their
+hitherto unchanging life, and it was difficult to separate premonition
+from substantial fact.  The present fact did not represent all they felt,
+though it represented all on which they might speak together now.
+
+Looking round the room, at last Faith said: "Thee has all thee needs,
+David?  Thee is sure?"
+
+He nodded.  "I know not yet how little man may need.  I have lived in
+plenty."
+
+At that moment her eyes rested on the Cloistered House.
+
+"The Earl of Eglington would not call it plenty."  A shade passed over
+David's face.  "I know not how he would measure.  Is his own field so
+wide?"
+
+"The spread of a peacock's feather."
+
+"What does thee know of him?" David asked the question absently.
+
+"I have eyes to see, Davy."  The shadows from that seeing were in her
+eyes as she spoke, but he did not observe them.
+
+"Thee sees but with half an eye," she continued.  "With both mine I have
+seen horses and carriages, and tall footmen, and wine and silver, and
+gilded furniture, and fine pictures, and rolls of new carpet--of Uncle
+Benn's best carpets, Davy--and a billiard-table, and much else."
+
+A cloud slowly gathered over David's face, and he turned to her with an
+almost troubled surprise.  "Thee has seen these things--and how?"
+
+"One day--thee was in Devon--one of the women was taken ill.  They sent
+for me because the woman asked it.  She was a Papist; but she begged that
+I should go with her to the hospital, as there was no time to send to
+Heddington for a nurse.  She had seen me once in the house of the toll-
+gate keeper.  Ill as she was, I could have laughed, for, as we went in
+the Earl's carriage to the hospital-thirty miles it was--she said she
+felt at home with me, my dress being so like a nun's.  It was then I saw
+the Cloistered House within and learned what was afoot."
+
+"In the Earl's carriage indeed--and the Earl?"
+
+"He was in Ireland, burrowing among those tarnished baubles, his titles,
+and stripping the Irish Peter to clothe the English Paul."
+
+"He means to make Hamley his home?  From Ireland these furnishings come?"
+
+"So it seems.  Henceforth the Cloistered House will have its doors flung
+wide.  London and all the folk of Parliament will flutter along the dunes
+of Hamley."
+
+"Then the bailiff will sit yonder within a year, for he is but a starved
+Irish peer."
+
+"He lives to-day as though he would be rich tomorrow.  He bids for fame
+and fortune, Davy."
+
+"'Tis as though a shirtless man should wear a broadcloth coat over a
+cotton vest."
+
+"The world sees only the broadcloth coat.  For the rest--"
+
+"For the rest, Faith?"
+
+"They see the man's face, and--"
+
+His eyes were embarrassed.  A thought had flashed into his mind which he
+considered unworthy, for this girl beside him was little likely to dwell
+upon the face of a renegade peer, whose living among them was a constant
+reminder of his father's apostasy.  She was too fine, dwelt in such high
+spheres, that he could not think of her being touched by the glittering
+adventures of this daring young member of Parliament, whose book of
+travels had been published, only to herald his understood determination
+to have office in the Government, not in due time, but in his own time.
+What could there be in common between the sophisticated Eglington and
+this sweet, primitively wholesome Quaker girl?
+
+Faith read what was passing in his mind.  She flushed--slowly flushed
+until her face--and eyes were one soft glow, then she laid a hand upon
+his arm and said: "Davy, I feel the truth about him--no more.  Nothing of
+him is for thee or me.  His ways are not our ways."  She paused, and then
+said solemnly: "He hath a devil.  That I feel.  But he hath also a mind,
+and a cruel will.  He will hew a path, or make others hew it for him.  He
+will make or break.  Nothing will stand in his way, neither man nor
+thing, those he loves nor those he hates.  He will go on--and to go on,
+all means, so they be not criminal, will be his.  Men will prophesy great
+things for him--they do so now.  But nothing they prophesy, Davy, keeps
+pace with his resolve."
+
+"How does thee know these things?"
+
+His question was one of wonder and surprise.  He had never before seen in
+her this sharp discernment and criticism.
+
+"How know I, Davy?  I know him by studying thee.  What thee is not he is.
+What he is thee is not."  The last beams of the sun sent a sudden glint
+of yellow to the green at their feet from the western hills, rising far
+over and above the lower hills of the village, making a wide ocean of
+light, at the bottom of which lay the Meeting-house and the Cloistered
+House, and the Red Mansion with the fruited wall, and all the others,
+like dwellings at the bottom of a golden sea.  David's eyes were on the
+distance, and the far-seeing look was in his face which had so deeply
+impressed Faith in the Meeting-house, by which she had read his future.
+
+"And shall I not also go on?" he asked.
+
+"How far, who can tell?"
+
+There was a plaintive note in her voice--the unavailing and sad protest
+of the maternal spirit, of the keeper of the nest, who sees the brood fly
+safely away, looking not back.
+
+"What does thee see for me afar, Faith?"  His look was eager.
+
+"The will of God, which shall be done," she said with a sudden
+resolution, and stood up.  Her hands were lightly clasped before her like
+those of Titian's Mater Dolorosa among the Rubens and Tintorettos of the
+Prado, a lonely figure, whose lot it was to spend her life for others.
+Even as she already had done; for thrice she had refused marriages
+suitable and possible to her.  In each case she had steeled her heart
+against loving, that she might be all in all to her sister's child and to
+her father.  There is no habit so powerful as the habit of care of
+others.  In Faith it came as near being a passion as passion could have a
+place in her even-flowing blood, under that cool flesh, governed by a
+heart as fair as the apricot blossoms on the wall in her father's garden.
+She had been bitterly hurt in the Meeting-house; as bitterly as is many a
+woman when her lover has deceived her.  David had acknowledged before
+them all that he had played the flute secretly for years!  That he should
+have played it was nothing; that she should not have shared his secret,
+and so shared his culpability before them all, was a wound which would
+take long to heal.
+
+She laid her hand upon his shoulder suddenly with a nervous little
+motion.
+
+"And the will of God thee shall do to His honour, though thee is outcast
+to-day.  .  .  .  But, Davy, the music-thee kept it from me."
+
+He looked up at her steadily; he read what was in her mind.
+
+"I hid it so, because I would not have thy conscience troubled.  Thee
+would go far to smother it for me; and I was not so ungrateful to thee.
+I did it for good to thee."
+
+A smile passed across her lips.  Never was woman so grateful, never wound
+so quickly healed.  She shook her head sadly at him, and stilling the
+proud throbbing of her heart, she said:
+
+"But thee played so well, Davy!"
+
+He got up and turned his head away, lest he should laugh outright.  Her
+reasoning--though he was not worldly enough to call it feminine, and
+though it scarce tallied with her argument--seemed to him quite her own.
+
+"How long have we?" he said over his shoulder.  "The sun is yet five
+minutes up, or more," she said, a little breathlessly, for she saw his
+hand inside his coat, and guessed his purpose.
+
+"But thee will not dare to play--thee will not dare," she said, but more
+as an invitation than a rebuke.  "Speech was denied me here, but not my
+music.  I find no sin in it."
+
+She eagerly watched him adjust the flute.  Suddenly she drew to him the
+chair from the doorway, and beckoned him to sit down.  She sat where she
+could see the sunset.
+
+The music floated through the room and down the hillside, a searching
+sweetness.
+
+She kept her face ever on the far hills.  It went on and on.  At last it
+stopped.  David roused himself, as from a dream.  "But it is dark!" he
+said, startled.  "It is past the time thee should be with me.  My
+banishment began at sunset."
+
+"Are all the sins to be thine?" she asked calmly.  She had purposely let
+him play beyond the time set for their being together.
+
+"Good-night, Davy."  She kissed him on the cheek.  "I will keep the music
+for the sin's remembrance," she added, and went out into the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE CALL
+
+"England is in one of those passions so creditable to her moral sense,
+so illustrative of her unregulated virtues.  We are living in the first
+excitement and horror of the news of the massacre of Christians at
+Damascus.  We are full of righteous and passionate indignation.  'Punish
+--restore the honour of the Christian nations' is the proud appeal of
+prelate, prig, and philanthropist, because some hundreds of Christians
+who knew their danger, yet chose to take up their abode in a fanatical
+Muslim city of the East, have suffered death."
+
+The meeting had been called in answer to an appeal from Exeter Hall.
+Lord Eglington had been asked to speak, and these were among his closing
+words.
+
+He had seen, as he thought, an opportunity for sensation.  Politicians
+of both sides, the press on all hands, were thundering denunciations upon
+the city of Damascus, sitting insolent and satiated in its exquisite
+bloom of pear and nectarine, and the deed itself was fading into that
+blank past of Eastern life where there "are no birds in last year's
+nest."  If he voyaged with the crowd, his pennant would be lost in the
+clustering sails!  So he would move against the tide, and would startle,
+even if he did not convince.
+
+"Let us not translate an inflamed religious emotion into a war," he
+continued.  "To what good?  Would it restore one single life in Damascus?
+Would it bind one broken heart?  Would it give light to one darkened
+home?  Let us have care lest we be called a nation of hypocrites.  I will
+neither support nor oppose the resolution presented; I will content
+myself with pointing the way to a greater national self-respect."
+
+Mechanically, a few people who had scarcely apprehended the full force of
+his remarks began to applaud; but there came cries of "'Sh! 'Sh!" and
+the clapping of hands suddenly stopped.  For a moment there was absolute
+silence, in which the chairman adjusted his glasses and fumbled with the
+agenda paper in his confusion, scarcely knowing what to do.  The speaker
+had been expected to second the resolution, and had not done so.  There
+was an awkward silence.  Then, in a loud whisper, some one said:
+
+"David, David, do thee speak."
+
+It was the voice of Faith Claridge.  Perturbed and anxious, she had come
+to the meeting with her father.  They had not slept for nights, for the
+last news they had had of Benn Claridge was from the city of Damascus,
+and they were full of painful apprehensions.
+
+It was the eve of the first day of winter, and David's banishment was
+over.  Faith had seen David often at a distance--how often had she stood
+in her window and looked up over the apricot-wall to the chair-maker's
+hut on the hill!  According to his penalty David had never come to Hamley
+village, but had lived alone, speaking to no one, avoided by all, working
+out his punishment.  Only the day before the meeting he had read of the
+massacre at Damascus from a newspaper which had been left on his doorstep
+overnight.  Elder Fairley had so far broken the covenant of ostracism and
+boycott, knowing David's love for his Uncle Benn.
+
+All that night David paced the hillside in anxiety and agitation, and saw
+the sun rise upon a new world--a world of freedom, of home-returning, yet
+a world which, during the past four months, had changed so greatly that
+it would never seem the same again.
+
+The sun was scarce two hours high when Faith and her father mounted the
+hill to bring him home again.  He had, however, gone to Heddington to
+learn further news of the massacre.  He was thinking of his Uncle Benn-
+all else could wait.  His anxiety was infinitely greater than that of
+Luke Claridge, for his mind had been disturbed by frequent premonitions;
+and those sudden calls in his sleep-his uncle's voice--ever seemed to be
+waking him at night.  He had not meant to speak at the meeting, but the
+last words of the speaker decided him; he was in a flame of indignation.
+He heard the voice of Faith whisper over the heads of the people.
+"David, David, do thee speak."  Turning, he met her eyes, then rose to
+his feet, came steadily to the platform, and raised a finger towards the
+chairman.
+
+A great whispering ran through the audience.  Very many recognised him,
+and all had heard of him--the history of his late banishment and self-
+approving punishment were familiar to them.  He climbed the steps of the
+platform alertly, and the chairman welcomed him with nervous pleasure.
+Any word from a Quaker, friendly to the feeling of national indignation,
+would give the meeting the new direction which all desired.
+
+Something in the face of the young man, grown thin and very pale during
+the period of long thought and little food in the lonely and meditative
+life he had led; something human and mysterious in the strange tale of
+his one day's mad doings, fascinated them.  They had heard of the liquor
+he had drunk, of the woman he had kissed at the cross-roads, of the man
+he had fought, of his discipline and sentence.  His clean, shapely
+figure, and the soft austerity of the neat grey suit he wore, his broad-
+brimmed hat pushed a little back, showing well a square white forehead--
+all conspired to send a wave of feeling through the audience, which
+presently broke into cheering.
+
+Beginning with the usual formality, he said: "I am obliged to differ from
+nearly every sentiment expressed by the Earl of Eglington, the member for
+Levizes, who has just taken his seat."
+
+There was an instant's pause, the audience cheered, and cries of delight
+came from all parts of the house.  "All good counsel has its sting," he
+continued, "but the good counsel of him who has just spoken is a sting in
+a wound deeper than the skin.  The noble Earl has bidden us to be
+consistent and reasonable.  I have risen here to speak for that to which
+mere consistency and reason may do cruel violence.  I am a man of peace,
+I am the enemy of war--it is my faith and creed; yet I repudiate the
+principle put forward by the Earl of Eglington, that you shall not clinch
+your hand for the cause which is your heart's cause, because, if you
+smite, the smiting must be paid for."
+
+He was interrupted by cheers and laughter, for the late event in his own
+life came to them to point his argument.
+
+"The nation that declines war may be refusing to inflict that just
+punishment which alone can set the wrong-doers on the better course.  It
+is not the faith of that Society to which I belong to decline correction
+lest it may seem like war."
+
+The point went home significantly, and cheering followed.  "The high
+wall of Tibet, a stark refusal to open the door to the wayfarer, I can
+understand; but, friend"--he turned to the young peer--"friend, I cannot
+understand a defence of him who opens the door upon terms of mutual
+hospitality, and then, in the red blood of him who has so contracted,
+blots out the just terms upon which they have agreed.  Is that thy faith,
+friend?"
+
+The repetition of the word friend was almost like a gibe, though it was
+not intended as such.  There was none present, however, but knew of the
+defection of the Earl's father from the Society of Friends, and they
+chose to interpret the reference to a direct challenge.  It was a
+difficult moment for the young Earl, but he only smiled, and cherished
+anger in his heart.
+
+For some minutes David spoke with force and power, and he ended with
+passionate solemnity.  His voice rang out: "The smoke of this burning
+rises to Heaven, the winds that wail over scattered and homeless dust
+bear a message of God to us.  In the name of Mahomet, whose teaching
+condemns treachery and murder, in the name of the Prince of Peace, who
+taught that justice which makes for peace, I say it is England's duty to
+lay the iron hand of punishment upon this evil city and on the Government
+in whose orbit it shines with so deathly a light.  I fear it is that one
+of my family and of my humble village lies beaten to death in Damascus.
+Yet not because of that do I raise my voice here to-day.  These many
+years Benn Claridge carried his life in his hands, and in a good cause it
+was held like the song of a bird, to be blown from his lips in the day of
+the Lord.  I speak only as an Englishman.  I ask you to close your minds
+against the words of this brilliant politician, who would have you settle
+a bill of costs written in Christian blood, by a promise to pay, got
+through a mockery of armed display in those waters on which once looked
+the eyes of the Captain of our faith.  Humanity has been put in the
+witness-box of the world; let humanity give evidence."
+
+Women wept.  Men waved their hats and cheered; the whole meeting rose to
+its feet and gave vent to its feelings.
+
+For some moments the tumult lasted, Eglington looking on with face
+unmoved.  As David turned to leave the table, however, he murmured,
+"Peacemaker!  Peacemaker!" and smiled sarcastically.
+
+As the audience resumed their seats, two people were observed making
+their way to the platform.  One was Elder Fairley, leading the way to a
+tall figure in a black robe covering another coloured robe, and wearing a
+large white turban.  Not seeing the new-comers, the chairman was about to
+put the resolution; but a protesting hand from John Fairley stopped him,
+and in a strange silence the two new-comers mounted the platform.  David
+rose and advanced to meet them.  There flashed into his mind that this
+stranger in Eastern garb was Ebn Ezra Bey, the old friend of Benn
+Claridge, of whom his uncle had spoken and written so much.  The same
+instinct drew Ebn Ezra Bey to him--he saw the uncle's look in the
+nephew's face.  In a breathless stillness the Oriental said in perfect
+English, with a voice monotonously musical:
+
+"I came to thy house and found thee not.  I have a message for thee from
+the land where thine uncle sojourned with me."
+
+He took from a wallet a piece of paper and passed it to David, adding: "I
+was thine uncle's friend.  He hath put off his sandals and walketh with
+bare feet!" David read eagerly.
+
+"It is time to go, Davy," the paper said.  "All that I have is thine.
+Go to Egypt, and thee shall find it so.  Ebn Ezra Bey will bring thee.
+Trust him as I have done.  He is a true man, though the Koran be his
+faith.  They took me from behind, Davy, so that I was spared temptation
+--I die as I lived, a man of peace.  It is too late to think how it might
+have gone had we met face to face; but the will of God worketh not
+according to our will.  I can write no more.  Luke, Faith, and Davy--dear
+Davy, the night has come, and all's well.  Good morrow, Davy.  Can you
+not hear me call?  I have called thee so often of late!  Good morrow!
+Good morrow!  .  .  .  I doff my hat, Davy--at last--to God!"
+
+David's face whitened.  All his visions had been true visions, his dreams
+true dreams.  Brave Benn Claridge had called to him at his door--" Good
+morrow!  Good morrow!  Good morrow!"  Had he not heard the knocking and
+the voice?  Now all was made clear.  His path lay open before him--a far
+land called him, his quiet past was infinite leagues away.  Already the
+staff was in his hands and the cross-roads were sinking into the distance
+behind.  He was dimly conscious of the wan, shocked face of Faith in the
+crowd beneath him, which seemed blurred and swaying, of the bowed head of
+Luke Claridge, who, standing up, had taken off his hat in the presence of
+this news of his brother's death which he saw written in David's face.
+David stood for a moment before the great throng, numb and speechless.
+"It is a message from Damascus," he said at last, and could say no more.
+
+Ebn Ezra Bey turned a grave face upon the audience.
+
+Will you hear me?" he said.  "I am an Arab."  "Speak--speak!" came from
+every side.
+
+"The Turk hath done his evil work in Damascus," he said.  "All the
+Christians are dead--save one; he hath turned Muslim, and is safe."  His
+voice had a note of scorn.  "It fell sudden and swift like a storm in
+summer.  There were no paths to safety.  Soldiers and those who led them
+shared in the slaying.  As he and I who had travelled far together these
+many years sojourned there in the way of business, I felt the air grow
+colder, I saw the cloud gathering.  I entreated, but he would not go.
+If trouble must come, then he would be with the Christians in their
+peril.  At last he saw with me the truth.  He had a plan of escape.
+There was a Christian weaver with his wife in a far quarter--against my
+entreaty he went to warn them.  The storm broke.  He was the first to
+fall, smitten in 'that street called Straight.'  I found him soon after.
+Thus did he speak to me--even in these words: 'The blood of women and
+children shed here to-day shall cry from the ground.  Unprovoked the host
+has turned wickedly upon his guest.  The storm has been sown, and the
+whirlwind must be reaped.  Out of this evil good shall come.  Shall not
+the Judge of all the earth do right?'  These were his last words to me
+then.  As his life ebbed out, he wrote a letter which I have brought
+hither to one"--he turned to David--"whom he loved.  At the last he took
+off his hat, and lay with it in his hands, and died.  .  .  .  I am a
+Muslim, but the God of pity, of justice, and of right is my God; and in
+His name be it said that was a crime of Sheitan the accursed."
+
+In a low voice the chairman put the resolution.  The Earl of Eglington
+voted in its favour.
+
+Walking the hills homeward with Ebn Ezra Bey, Luke, Faith, and John
+Fairley, David kept saying over to himself the words of Benn Claridge:
+"I have called thee so often of late.  Good morrow!  Good morrow!  Good
+morrow!  Can you not hear me call?"
+
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+There is no habit so powerful as the habit of care of others
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WEAVERS
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+
+V.        THE WIDER WAY
+VI.       "HAST THOU NEVER BILLED A MANY"
+VII.      THE COMPACT
+VIII.     FOR HIS SOUL'S SAKE AND THE LAND'S SAKE
+IX.       THE LETTER, THE NIGHT, AND THE WOMAN
+X.        THE FOUR WHO KNEW
+XI.       AGAINST THE HOUR OF MIDNIGHT
+XII.      THE JEHAD AND THE LIONS
+XIII.     ACHMET THE ROPEMAKER STRIKES
+XIV.      BEYOND THE PALE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE WIDER WAY
+
+Some months later the following letter came to David Claridge in Cairo
+from Faith Claridge in Hamley:
+
+     David, I write thee from the village and the land of the people
+     which thou didst once love so well.  Does thee love them still?
+     They gave thee sour bread to eat ere thy going, but yet thee didst
+     grind the flour for the baking.  Thee didst frighten all who knew
+     thee with thy doings that mad midsummer time.  The tavern, the
+     theatre, the cross-roads, and the cockpit--was ever such a day!
+
+     Now, Davy, I must tell of a strange thing.  But first, a moment.
+     Thee remembers the man Kimber smitten by thee at the public-house on
+     that day?  What think thee has happened?  He followed to London the
+     lass kissed by thee, and besought her to return and marry him.  This
+     she refused at first with anger; but afterwards she said that, if in
+     three years he was of the same mind, and stayed sober and hard-
+     working meanwhile, she would give him an answer, she would consider.
+     Her head was high.  She has become maid to a lady of degree, who has
+     well befriended her.
+
+     How do I know these things?  Even from Jasper Kimber, who, on his
+     return from London, was taken to his bed with fever.  Because of the
+     hard blows dealt him by thee, I went to make amends.  He welcomed
+     me, and soon opened his whole mind.  That mind has generous moments,
+     David, for he took to being thankful for thy knocks.
+
+     Now for the strange thing I hinted.  After visiting Jasper Kimber at
+     Heddington, as I came back over the hill by the path we all took
+     that day after the Meeting--Ebn Ezra Bey, my father, Elder Fairley,
+     and thee and me--I drew near the chairmaker's but where thee lived
+     alone all those sad months.  It was late evening; the sun had set.
+     Yet I felt that I must needs go and lay my hand in love upon the
+     door of the empty hut which had been ever as thee left it.  So I
+     came down the little path swiftly, and then round the great rock,
+     and up towards the door.  But, as I did so, my heart stood still,
+     for I heard voices.  The door was open, but I could see no one.  Yet
+     there the voices sounded, one sharp and peevish with anger, the
+     other low and rough.  I could not hear what was said.  At last, a
+     figure came from the door and went quickly down the hillside.  Who,
+     think thee, was it?  Even "neighbour Eglington."  I knew the walk
+     and the forward thrust of the head.  Inside the hut all was still.
+     I drew near with a kind of fear, but yet I came to the door and
+     looked in.
+
+     As I looked into the dusk, my limbs trembled under me, for who
+     should be sitting there, a half-finished chair between his knees,
+     but Soolsby the old chair-maker!  Yes, it was he.  There he sat
+     looking at me with his staring blue eyes and shock of redgrey hair.
+     "Soolsby!  Soolsby!" said I, my heart hammering at my breast; for
+     was not Soolsby dead and buried?  His eyes stared at me in fright.
+     "Why do you come?" he said in a hoarse whisper.  "Is he dead, then?
+     Has harm come to him?"
+
+     By now I had recovered myself, for it was no ghost I saw, but a
+     human being more distraught than was myself.  "Do you not know me,
+     Soolsby?" I asked.  "You are Mercy Claridge from beyond--beyond and
+     away," he answered dazedly.  "I am Faith Claridge, Soolsby,"
+     answered I.  He started, peered forward at me, and for a moment he
+     did not speak; then the fear went from his face.  "Ay, Faith
+     Claridge, as I said," he answered, with apparent understanding, his
+     stark mood passing.  "No, thee said Mercy Claridge, Soolsby," said
+     I, "and she has been asleep these many years."  "Ay, she has slept
+     soundly, thanks be to God!" he replied, and crossed himself.  "Why
+     should thee call me by her name?" I inquired.  "Ay, is not her tomb
+     in the churchyard?" he answered, and added quickly, "Luke Claridge
+     and I are of an age to a day--which, think you, will go first?"
+
+     He stopped weaving, and peered over at me with his staring blue
+     eyes, and I felt a sudden quickening of the heart.  For, at the
+     question, curtains seemed to drop from all around me, and leave me
+     in the midst of pains and miseries, in a chill air that froze me to
+     the marrow.  I saw myself alone--thee in Egypt and I here, and none
+     of our blood and name beside me.  For we are the last, Davy, the
+     last of the Claridges.  But I said coldly, and with what was near to
+     anger, that he should link his name and fate with that of Luke
+     Claridge: "Which of ye two goes first is God's will, and according
+     to His wisdom.  Which, think thee," added I--and now I cannot
+     forgive myself for saying it--"which, think thee, would do least
+     harm in going?"  "I know which would do most good," he answered,
+     with a harsh laugh in his throat.  Yet his blue eyes looked kindly
+     at me, and now he began to nod pleasantly.  I thought him a little
+     mad, but yet his speech had seemed not without dark meaning.  "Thee
+     has had a visitor," I said to him presently.  He laughed in a
+     snarling way that made me shrink, and answered: "He wanted this and
+     he wanted that--his high-handed, second-best lordship.  Ay, and he
+     would have it, because it pleased him to have it--like his father
+     before him.  A poor sparrow on a tree-top, if you tell him he must
+     not have it, he will hunt it down the world till it is his, as
+     though it was a bird of paradise.  And when he's seen it fall at
+     last, he'll remember but the fun of the chase; and the bird may get
+     to its tree-top again--if it can--if it can--if it can, my lord!
+     That is what his father was, the last Earl, and that is what he is
+     who left my door but now.  He came to snatch old Soolsby's palace,
+     his nest on the hill, to use it for a telescope, or such whimsies.
+     He has scientific tricks like his father before him.  Now is it
+     astronomy, and now chemistry, and suchlike; and always it is the
+     Eglington mind, which let God A'mighty make it as a favour.  He
+     would have old Soolsby's palace for his spy-glass, would he then?
+     It scared him, as though I was the devil himself, to find me here.
+     I had but come back in time--a day later, and he would have sat here
+     and seen me in the Pit below before giving way.  Possession's nine
+     points were with me; and here I sat and faced him; and here he
+     stormed, and would do this and should do that; and I went on with my
+     work.  Then he would buy my Colisyum, and I wouldn't sell it for all
+     his puffball lordship might offer.  Isn't the house of the snail as
+     much to him as the turtle's shell to the turtle?  I'll have no
+     upstart spilling his chemicals here, or devilling the stars from a
+     seat on my roof."  "Last autumn," said I, "David Claridge was housed
+     here.  Thy palace was a prison then."  "I know well of that.
+     Haven't I found his records here?  And do you think his makeshift
+     lordship did not remind me?"  "Records?  What records, Soolsby?"
+     asked I, most curious.  "Writings of his thoughts which he forgot--
+     food for mind and body left in the cupboard."  "Give them to me upon
+     this instant, Soolsby," said I.  "All but one," said he, "and that
+     is my own, for it was his mind upon Soolsby the drunken chair-maker.
+     God save him from the heathen sword that slew his uncle.  Two better
+     men never sat upon a chair!"  He placed the papers in my hand, all
+     save that one which spoke of him.  Ah, David, what with the flute
+     and the pen, banishment was no pain to thee!  .  .  .  He placed the
+     papers, save that one, in my hands, and I, womanlike, asked again
+     for all.  "Some day," said he, "come, and I will read it to you.
+     Nay, I will give you a taste of it now," he added, as he brought
+     forth the writing.  "Thus it reads."
+
+     Here are thy words, Davy.  What think thee of them now?
+
+     "As I dwell in this house I know Soolsby as I never knew him when he
+     lived, and though, up here, I spent many an hour with him.  Men
+     leave their impressions on all around them.  The walls which have
+     felt their look and their breath, the floor which has taken their
+     footsteps, the chairs in which they have sat, have something of
+     their presence.  I feel Soolsby here at times so sharply that it
+     would seem he came again and was in this room, though he is dead and
+     gone.  I ask him how it came he lived here alone; how it came that
+     he made chairs, he, with brains enough to build great houses or
+     great bridges; how it was that drink and he were such friends; and
+     how he, a Catholic, lived here among us Quakers, so singular,
+     uncompanionable, and severe.  I think it true, and sadly true, that
+     a man with a vice which he is able to satisfy easily and habitually,
+     even as another satisfies a virtue, may give up the wider actions of
+     the world and the possibilities of his life for the pleasure which
+     his one vice gives him, and neither miss nor desire those greater
+     chances of virtue or ambition which he has lost.  The simplicity of
+     a vice may be as real as the simplicity of a virtue."
+
+     Ah, David, David, I know not what to think of those strange words;
+     but old Soolsby seemed well to understand thee, and he called thee
+     "a first-best gentleman."  Is my story long?  Well, it was so
+     strange, and it fixed itself upon my mind so deeply, and thy
+     writings at the hut have been so much in my hands and in my mind,
+     that I have put it all down here.  When I asked Soolsby how it came
+     he had been rumoured dead, he said that he himself had been the
+     cause of it; but for what purpose he would not say, save that he was
+     going a long voyage, and had made up his mind to return no more.  "I
+     had a friend," he said, "and I was set to go and see that friend
+     again.  .  .  .  But the years go on, and friends have an end.  Life
+     spills faster than the years," he said.  And he would say no more,
+     but would walk with me even to my father's door.  "May the Blessed
+     Virgin and all the Saints be with you," he said at parting, "if you
+     will have a blessing from them.  And tell him who is beyond and away
+     in Egypt that old Soolsby's busy making a chair for him to sit in
+     when the scarlet cloth is spread, and the East and West come to
+     salaam before him.  Tell him the old man says his fluting will be
+     heard."
+
+     And now, David, I have told thee all, nearly.  Remains to say that
+     thy one letter did our hearts good.  My father reads it over and
+     over, and shakes his head sadly, for, truth is, he has a fear that
+     the world may lay its hand upon thee.  One thing I do observe, his
+     heart is hard set against Lord Eglington.  In degree it has ever
+     been so; but now it is like a constant frown upon his forehead.  I
+     see him at his window looking out towards the Cloistered House; and
+     if our neighbour comes forth, perhaps upon his hunter, or now in his
+     cart, or again with his dogs, he draws his hat down upon his eyes
+     and whispers to himself.  I think he is ever setting thee off
+     against Lord Eglington; and that is foolish, for Eglington is but a
+     man of the earth earthy.  His is the soul of the adventurer.
+
+     Now what more to be set down?  I must ask thee how is thy friend Ebn
+     Ezra Bey?  I am glad thee did find all he said was true, and that in
+     Damascus thee was able to set a mark by my uncle's grave.  But that
+     the Prince Pasha of Egypt has set up a claim against my uncle's
+     property is evil news; though, thanks be to God, as my father says,
+     we have enough to keep us fed and clothed and housed.  But do thee
+     keep enough of thy inheritance to bring thee safe home again to
+     those who love thee.  England is ever grey, Davy, but without thee
+     it is grizzled--all one "Quaker drab," as says the Philistine.  But
+     it is a comely and a good land, and here we wait for thee.
+
+     In love and remembrance.
+
+     I am thy mother's sister, thy most loving friend.
+
+                                             FAITH.
+
+
+David received this letter as he was mounting a huge white Syrian donkey
+to ride to the Mokattam Hills, which rise sharply behind Cairo, burning
+and lonely and large.  The cities of the dead Khalifas and Mamelukes
+separated them from the living city where the fellah toiled, and Arab,
+Bedouin, Copt strove together to intercept the fruits of his toiling, as
+it passed in the form of taxes to the Palace of the Prince Pasha; while
+in the dark corners crouched, waiting, the cormorant usurers--Greeks,
+Armenians, and Syrians, a hideous salvage corps, who saved the house of
+a man that they might at last walk off with his shirt and the cloth under
+which he was carried to his grave.  In a thousand narrow streets and
+lanes, in the warm glow of the bazaars, in earth-damp huts, by blistering
+quays, on the myriad ghiassas on the river, from long before sunrise till
+the sunset-gun boomed from the citadel rising beside the great mosque
+whose pinnacles seem to touch the blue, the slaves of the city of Prince
+Kaid ground out their lives like corn between the millstones.
+
+David had been long enough in Egypt to know what sort of toiling it was.
+A man's labour was not his own.  The fellah gave labour and taxes and
+backsheesh and life to the State, and the long line of tyrants above him,
+under the sting of the kourbash; the high officials gave backsheesh to
+the Prince Pasha, or to his Mouffetish, or to his Chief Eunuch, or to his
+barber, or to some slave who had his ear.
+
+But all the time the bright, unclouded sun looked down on a smiling land,
+and in Cairo streets the din of the hammers, the voices of the boys
+driving heavily laden donkeys, the call of the camel-drivers leading
+their caravans into the great squares, the clang of the brasses of the
+sherbet-sellers, the song of the vendor of sweetmeats, the drone of the
+merchant praising his wares, went on amid scenes of wealth and luxury,
+and the city glowed with colour and gleamed with light.  Dark faces
+grinned over the steaming pot at the door of the cafes, idlers on the
+benches smoked hasheesh, female street-dancers bared their faces
+shamelessly to the men, and indolent musicians beat on their tiny drums,
+and sang the song of "O Seyyid," or of "Antar"; and the reciter gave his
+sing-song tale from a bench above his fellows.  Here a devout Muslim,
+indifferent to the presence of strangers, turned his face to the East,
+touched his forehead to the ground, and said his prayers.  There, hung to
+a tree by a deserted mosque near by, the body of one who was with them
+all an hour before, and who had paid the penalty for some real or
+imaginary crime; while his fellows blessed Allah that the storm had
+passed them by.  Guilt or innocence did not weigh with them; and the dead
+criminal, if such he were, who had drunk his glass of water and prayed to
+Allah, was, in their sight, only fortunate and not disgraced, and had
+"gone to the bosom of Allah."  Now the Muezzin from a minaret called to
+prayer, and the fellah in his cotton shirt and yelek heard, laid his load
+aside, and yielded himself to his one dear illusion, which would enable
+him to meet with apathy his end--it might be to-morrow!--and go forth to
+that plenteous heaven where wives without number awaited him, where
+fields would yield harvests without labour, where rich food in gold
+dishes would be ever at his hand.  This was his faith.
+
+David had now been in the country six months, rapidly perfecting his
+knowledge of Arabic, speaking it always to his servant Mahommed Hassan,
+whom he had picked from the streets.  Ebn Ezra Bey had gone upon his own
+business to Fazougli, the tropical Siberia of Egypt, to liberate, by
+order of Prince Kaid,--and at a high price--a relative banished there.
+David had not yet been fortunate with his own business--the settlement
+of his Uncle Benn's estate--though the last stages of negotiation with
+the Prince Pasha seemed to have been reached.  When he had brought the
+influence of the British Consulate to bear, promises were made, doors
+were opened wide, and Pasha and Bey offered him coffee and talked to him
+sympathetically.  They had respect for him more than for most Franks,
+because the Prince Pasha had honoured him with especial favour.  Perhaps
+because David wore his hat always and the long coat with high collar like
+a Turk, or because Prince Kaid was an acute judge of human nature, and
+also because honesty was a thing he greatly desired--in others--and never
+found near his own person; however it was, he had set David high in his
+esteem at once.  This esteem gave greater certainty that any backsheesh
+coming from the estate of Benn Claridge would not be sifted through many
+hands on its way to himself.  Of Benn Claridge Prince Kaid had scarcely
+even heard until he died; and, indeed, it was only within the past few
+years that the Quaker merchant had extended his business to Egypt and had
+made his headquarters at Assiout, up the river.
+
+David's donkey now picked its way carefully through the narrow streets of
+the Moosky.  Arabs and fellaheen squatting at street corners looked at
+him with furtive interest.  A foreigner of this character they had never
+before seen, with coat buttoned up like an Egyptian official in the
+presence of his superior, and this wide, droll hat on his head.  David
+knew that he ran risks, that his confidence invited the occasional
+madness of a fanatical mind, which makes murder of the infidel a passport
+to heaven; but as a man he took his chances, and as a Christian he
+believed he would suffer no mortal hurt till his appointed time.  He was
+more Oriental, more fatalist, than he knew.  He had also early in his
+life learned that an honest smile begets confidence; and his face, grave
+and even a little austere in outline, was usually lighted by a smile.
+
+From the Mokattam Hills, where he read Faith's letter again, his back
+against one of the forts which Napoleon had built in his Egyptian days,
+he scanned the distance.  At his feet lay the great mosque, and the
+citadel, whose guns controlled the city, could pour into it a lava stream
+of shot and shell.  The Nile wound its way through the green plains,
+stretching as far to the north as eye could see between the opal and
+mauve and gold of the Libyan Hills.  Far over in the western vista a long
+line of trees, twining through an oasis flanking the city, led out to a
+point where the desert abruptly raised its hills of yellow sand.  Here,
+enormous, lonely, and cynical, the pyramids which Cheops had built, the
+stone sphinx of Ghizeh, kept faith with the desert in the glow of
+rainless land-reminders ever that the East, the mother of knowledge, will
+by knowledge prevail; that:
+
+                   "The thousand years of thy insolence
+                    The thousand years of thy faith,
+                    Will be paid in fiery recompense,
+                    And a thousand years of bitter death."
+
+
+"The sword--for ever the sword," David said to himself, as he looked:
+"Rameses and David and Mahomet and Constantine, and how many conquests
+have been made in the name of God!  But after other conquests there have
+been peace and order and law.  Here in Egypt it is ever the sword, the
+survival of the strongest."
+
+As he made his way down the hillside again he fell to thinking upon all
+Faith had written.  The return of the drunken chair-maker made a deep
+impression on him--almost as deep as the waking dreams he had had of his
+uncle calling him.
+
+"Soolsby and me--what is there between Soolsby and me?" he asked himself
+now as he made his way past the tombs of the Mamelukes.  "He and I are as
+far apart as the poles, and yet it comes to me now, with a strange
+conviction, that somehow my life will be linked with that of the drunken
+Romish chair-maker.  To what end?"  Then he fell to thinking of his Uncle
+Benn.  The East was calling him.  "Something works within me to hold me
+here, a work to do."
+
+From the ramparts of the citadel he watched the sun go down, bathing the
+pyramids in a purple and golden light, throwing a glamour over all the
+western plain, and making heavenly the far hills with a plaintive colour,
+which spoke of peace and rest, but not of hope.  As he stood watching, he
+was conscious of people approaching.  Voices mingled, there was light
+laughter, little bursts of admiration, then lower tones, and then he was
+roused by a voice calling.  He turned round.  A group of people were
+moving towards the exit from the ramparts, and near himself stood a man
+waving an adieu.
+
+"Well, give my love to the girls," said the man cheerily.  Merry faces
+looked back and nodded, and in a moment they were gone.  The man turned
+round, and looked at David, then he jerked his head in a friendly sort of
+way and motioned towards the sunset.
+
+"Good enough, eh?"
+
+"Surely, for me," answered David.  On the instant he liked the red,
+wholesome face, and the keen, round, blue eyes, the rather opulent
+figure, the shrewd, whimsical smile, all aglow now with beaming
+sentimentality, which had from its softest corner called out:
+"Well, give my love to the girls."
+
+"Quaker, or I never saw Germantown and Philadelphy," he continued, with a
+friendly manner quite without offence.  "I put my money on Quakers every
+time."
+
+"But not from Germantown or Philadelphia," answered David, declining a
+cigar which his new acquaintance offered.
+
+"Bet you, I know that all right.  But I never saw Quakers anywhere else,
+and I meant the tribe and not the tent.  English, I bet?  Of course, or
+you wouldn't be talking the English language--though I've heard they talk
+it better in Boston than they do in England, and in Chicago they're
+making new English every day and improving on the patent.  If Chicago
+can't have the newest thing, she won't have anything.  'High hopes that
+burn like stars sublime,' has Chicago.  She won't let Shakespeare or
+Milton be standards much longer.  She won't have it--simply won't have
+England swaggering over the English language.  Oh, she's dizzy, is
+Chicago--simply dizzy.  I was born there.  Parents, one Philadelphy, one
+New York, one Pawtucket--the Pawtucket one was the step-mother.  Father
+liked his wives from the original States; but I was born in Chicago.  My
+name is Lacey--Thomas Tilman Lacey of Chicago."
+
+"I thank thee," said David.
+
+"And you, sir?"
+
+"David Claridge."
+
+"Of--?"
+
+"Of Hamley."
+
+"Mr. Claridge of Hamley.  Mr. Claridge, I am glad to meet you."  They
+shook hands.  "Been here long, Mr. Claridge?"
+
+"A few months only."
+
+"Queer place--gilt-edged dust-bin; get anything you like here, from a
+fresh gutter-snipe to old Haroun-al-Raschid.  It's the biggest jack-pot
+on earth.  Barnum's the man for this place--P. T. Barnum.  Golly, how the
+whole thing glitters and stews!  Out of Shoobra his High Jinks Pasha
+kennels with his lions and lives with his cellars of gold, as if he was
+going to take them with him where he's going--and he's going fast.  Here
+--down here, the people, the real people, sweat and drudge between a cake
+of dourha, an onion, and a balass of water at one end of the day, and a
+hemp collar and their feet off the ground at the other."
+
+"You have seen much of Egypt?" asked David, feeling a strange confidence
+in the garrulous man, whose frankness was united to shrewdness and a
+quick, observant eye.
+
+"How much of Egypt I've seen, the Egypt where more men get lost, strayed,
+and stolen than die in their beds every day, the Egypt where a eunuch is
+more powerful than a minister, where an official will toss away a life as
+I'd toss this cigar down there where the last Mameluke captain made his
+great jump, where women--Lord A'mighty! where women are divorced by one
+evil husband, by the dozen, for nothing they ever did or left undone,
+and yet 'd be cut to pieces by their own fathers if they learned that
+'To step aside is human--'  Mr. Claridge, of that Egypt I don't know much
+more'n would entitle me to say, How d'ye do.  But it's enough for me.
+You've seen something--eh?"
+
+"A little.  It is not civilised life here.  Yet--yet a few strong
+patriotic men--"
+
+Lacey looked quizzically at David.
+
+"Say," he said, "I thought that about Mexico once.  I said Manana--
+this Manana is the curse of Mexico.  It's always to-morrow--to-morrow
+--to-morrow.  Let's teach 'em to do things to-day.  Let's show 'em what
+business means.  Two million dollars went into that experiment, but
+Manana won.  We had good hands, but it had the joker.  After five years
+I left, with a bald head at twenty-nine, and a little book of noble
+thoughts--Tips for the Tired, or Things you can say To-day on what you
+can do to-morrow.  I lost my hair worrying, but I learned to be patient.
+The Dagos wanted to live in their own way, and they did.  It's one thing
+to be a missionary and say the little word in season; it's another to
+run your soft red head against a hard stone wall.  I went to Mexico a
+conquistador, I left it a child of time, who had learned to smile; and
+I left some millions behind me, too.  I said to an old Padre down there
+that I knew--we used to meet in the Cafe Manrique and drink chocolate--
+I said to him, 'Padre, the Lord's Prayer is a mistake down here.'
+'Si, senor,' he said, and smiled his far-away smile at me.  'Yes,' said
+I, 'for you say in the Lord's Prayer, "Give us this day our daily
+bread."'  'Si, senor,' he says, 'but we do not expect it till to-morrow!'
+The Padre knew from the start, but I learned at great expense, and went
+out of business--closed up shop for ever, with a bald head and my Tips
+for the Tired.  Well, I've had more out of it all, I guess, than if I'd
+trebled the millions and wiped Manana off the Mexican coat of arms."
+
+"You think it would be like that here?" David asked abstractedly.
+
+Lacey whistled.  "There the Government was all right and the people all
+wrong.  Here the people are all right and the Government all wrong.  Say,
+it makes my eyes water sometimes to see the fellah slogging away.  He's a
+Jim-dandy--works all day and half the night, and if the tax-gatherer
+isn't at the door, wakes up laughing.  I saw one"--his light blue eyes
+took on a sudden hardness--"laughing on the other side of his mouth one
+morning.  They were 'kourbashing' his feet; I landed on them as the soles
+came away.  I hit out."  His face became grave, he turned the cigar round
+in his mouth.  "It made me feel better, but I had a close call.  Lucky
+for me that in Mexico I got into the habit of carrying a pop-gun.  It
+saved me then.  But it isn't any use going on these special missions.
+We Americans think a lot of ourselves.  We want every land to do as
+we do; and we want to make 'em do it.  But a strong man here at the
+head, with a sword in his hand, peace in his heart, who'd be just and
+poor--how can you make officials honest when you take all you can get
+yourself--!  But, no, I guess it's no good.  This is a rotten cotton
+show."
+
+Lacey had talked so much, not because he was garrulous only, but because
+the inquiry in David's eyes was an encouragement to talk.  Whatever his
+misfortunes in Mexico had been, his forty years sat lightly on him, and
+his expansive temperament, his childlike sentimentality, gave him an
+appearance of beaming, sophisticated youth.  David was slowly
+apprehending these things as he talked--subconsciously, as it were;
+for he was seeing pictures of the things he himself had observed, through
+the lens of another mind, as primitive in some regards as his own, but
+influenced by different experiences.
+
+"Say, you're the best listener I ever saw," added Lacey, with a laugh.
+
+David held out his hand.  "Thee sees things clearly," he answered.
+
+Lacey grasped his hand.
+
+At that moment an orderly advanced towards them.  "He's after us--one of
+the Palace cavalry," said Lacey.
+
+"Effendi--Claridge Effendi!  May his grave be not made till the karadh-
+gatherers return," said the orderly to David.
+
+"My name is Claridge," answered David.
+
+"To the hotel, effendi, first, then to the Mokattam Hills after thee,
+then here--from the Effendina, on whom be God's peace, this letter for
+thee."
+
+David took the letter.  "I thank thee, friend," he said.
+
+As he read it, Lacey said to the orderly in Arabic "How didst thou know
+he was here?"
+
+The orderly grinned wickedly.
+
+"Always it is known what place the effendi honours.  It is not dark where
+he uncovers his face."
+
+Lacey gave a low whistle.
+
+"Say, you've got a pull in this show," he said, as David folded up the
+letter and put it in his pocket.
+
+"In Egypt, if the master smiles on you, the servant puts his nose in the
+dust."
+
+"The Prince Pasha bids me to dinner at the Palace to-night.  I have no
+clothes for such affairs.  Yet--" His mind was asking itself if this was
+a door opening, which he had no right to shut with his own hand.  There
+was no reason why he should not go; therefore there might be a reason why
+he should go.  It might be, it no doubt was, in the way of facilitating
+his business.  He dismissed the orderly with an affirmative and
+ceremonial message to Prince Kaid--and a piece of gold.
+
+"You've learned the custom of the place," said Lacey, as he saw the gold
+piece glitter in the brown palm of the orderly.
+
+"I suppose the man's only pay is in such service," rejoined David.
+"It is a land of backsheesh.  The fault is not with the people; it is
+with the rulers.  I am not sorry to share my goods with the poor."
+
+"You'll have a big going concern here in no time," observed Lacey.  "Now,
+if I had those millions I left in Mexico--"  Suddenly he stopped.  "Is it
+you that's trying to settle up an estate here--at Assiout--belonged to an
+uncle?"
+
+David inclined his head.
+
+"They say that you and Prince Kaid are doing the thing yourselves, and
+that the pashas and judges and all the high-mogul sharks of the Medjidie
+think that the end of the world has come.  Is that so?"
+
+"It is so, if not completely so.  There are the poor men and humble--the
+pashas and judges and the others of the Medjidie, as thee said, are not
+poor.  But such as the orderly yonder--"  He paused meditatively.
+
+Lacey looked at David with profound respect.  "You make the poorest
+your partners, your friends.  I see, I see.  Jerusalem, that's masterly!
+I admire you.  It's a new way in this country."  Then, after a moment:
+"It'll do--by golly, it'll do!  Not a bit more costly, and you do some
+good with it.  Yes--it--will--do."
+
+"I have given no man money save in charity and for proper service done
+openly," said David, a little severely.
+
+"Say--of course.  And that's just what isn't done here.  Everything goes
+to him who hath, and from him who hath not is taken away even that which
+he hath.  One does the work and another gets paid--that's the way here.
+But you, Mr. Claridge, you clinch with the strong man at the top, and,
+down below, you've got as your partners the poor man, whose name is
+Legion.  If you get a fall out of the man at the top, you're solid with
+the Legion.  And if the man at the top gets up again and salaams and
+strokes your hand, and says, 'Be my brother,' then it's a full Nile, and
+the fig-tree putteth forth its tender branches, and the date-palm
+flourisheth, and at the village pond the thanksgiving turkey gobbles and
+is glad.  'Selah'!"
+
+The sunset gun boomed out from the citadel.  David turned to go, and
+Lacey added:
+
+"I'm waiting for a pasha who's taking toll of the officers inside there
+--Achmet Pasha.  They call him the Ropemaker, because so many pass
+through his hands to the Nile.  The Old Muslin I call him, because he's
+so diaphanous.  Thinks nobody can see through him, and there's nobody
+that can't.  If you stay long in Egypt, you'll find that Achmet is the
+worst, and Nahoum the Armenian the deepest, pasha in all this sickening
+land.  Achmet is cruel as a tiger to any one that stands in his way;
+Nahoum, the whale, only opens out to swallow now and then; but when
+Nahoum does open out, down goes Jonah, and never comes up again.  He's a
+deep one, and a great artist is Nahoum.  I'll bet a dollar you'll see
+them both to-night at the Palace--if Kaid doesn't throw them to the lions
+for their dinner before yours is served.  Here one shark is swallowed by
+another bigger, till at last the only and original sea-serpent swallows
+'em all."
+
+As David wound his way down the hills, Lacey waved a hand after him.
+
+"Well, give my love to the girls," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+"HAST THOU NEVER KILLED A MAN?"
+
+"Claridge Effendi!"
+
+As David moved forward, his mind was embarrassed by many impressions.
+He was not confused, but the glitter and splendour, the Oriental
+gorgeousness of the picture into which he stepped, excited his eye,
+roused some new sense in him.  He was a curious figure in those
+surroundings.  The consuls and agents of all the nations save one were
+in brilliant uniform, and pashas, generals, and great officials were
+splendid in gold braid and lace, and wore flashing Orders on their
+breasts.  David had been asked for half-past eight o'clock, and he was
+there on the instant; yet here was every one assembled, the Prince Pasha
+included.  As he walked up the room he suddenly realised this fact, and,
+for a moment, he thought he had made a mistake; but again he remembered
+distinctly that the letter said half-past eight, and he wondered now if
+this had been arranged by the Prince--for what purpose?  To afford
+amusement to the assembled company?  He drew himself up with dignity,
+his face became graver.  He had come in a Quaker suit of black
+broadcloth, with grey steel buttons, and a plain white stock; and he wore
+his broad-brimmed hat--to the consternation of the British Consul-General
+and the Europeans present, to the amazement of the Turkish and native
+officials, who eyed him keenly.  They themselves wore red tarbooshes, as
+did the Prince; yet all of them knew that the European custom of showing
+respect was by doffing the hat.  The Prince Pasha had settled that with
+David, however, at their first meeting, when David had kept on his hat
+and offered Kaid his hand.
+
+Now, with amusement in his eyes, Prince Kaid watched David coming up the
+great hall.  What his object was in summoning David for an hour when all
+the court and all the official Europeans should be already present,
+remained to be seen.  As David entered, Kaid was busy receiving salaams,
+and returning greeting, but with an eye to the singularly boyish yet
+gallant figure approaching.  By the time David had reached the group, the
+Prince Pasha was ready to receive him.
+
+"Friend, I am glad to welcome thee," said the Effendina, sly humour
+lurking at the corner of his eye.  Conscious of the amazement of all
+present, he held out his hand to David.
+
+"May thy coming be as the morning dew, friend," he added, taking David's
+willing hand.
+
+"And thy feet, Kaid, wall in goodly paths, by the grace of God the
+compassionate and merciful."
+
+As a wind, unfelt, stirs the leaves of a forest, making it rustle
+delicately, a whisper swept through the room.  Official Egypt was
+dumfounded.  Many had heard of David, a few had seen him, and now all
+eyed with inquisitive interest one who defied so many of the customs of
+his countrymen; who kept on his hat; who used a Mahommedan salutation
+like a true believer; whom the Effendina honoured--and presently honoured
+in an unusual degree by seating him at table opposite himself, where his
+Chief Chamberlain was used to sit.
+
+During dinner Kaid addressed his conversation again and again to David,
+asking questions put to disconcert the consuls and other official folk
+present, confident in the naive reply which would be returned.  For there
+was a keen truthfulness in the young man's words which, however suave and
+carefully balanced, however gravely simple and tactful, left no doubt as
+to their meaning.  There was nothing in them which could be challenged,
+could be construed into active criticism of men or things; and yet much
+he said was horrifying.  It made Achmet Pasha sit up aghast, and Nahoum
+Pasha, the astute Armenian, for a long time past the confidant and
+favourite of the Prince Pasha, laugh in his throat; for, if there was
+a man in Egypt who enjoyed the thrust of a word or the bite of a phrase,
+it was Nahoum.  Christian though he was, he was, nevertheless, Oriental
+to his farthermost corner, and had the culture of a French savant.  He
+had also the primitive view of life, and the morals of a race who, in the
+clash of East and West, set against Western character and directness, and
+loyalty to the terms of a bargain, the demoralised cunning of the desert
+folk; the circuitous tactics of those who believed that no man spoke the
+truth directly, that it must ever be found beneath devious and misleading
+words, to be tracked like a panther, as an Antipodean bushman once said,
+"through the sinuosities of the underbrush."  Nahoum Pasha had also a
+rich sense of grim humour.  Perhaps that was why he had lived so near the
+person of the Prince, had held office so long.  There were no Grand
+Viziers in Egypt; but he was as much like one as possible, and he had one
+uncommon virtue, he was greatly generous.  If he took with his right hand
+he gave with his left; and Mahommedan as well as Copt and Armenian, and
+beggars of every race and creed, hung about his doors each morning to
+receive the food and alms he gave freely.
+
+After one of David's answers to Kaid, which had had the effect of causing
+his Highness to turn a sharp corner of conversation by addressing himself
+to the French consul, Nahoum said suavely:
+
+"And so, monsieur, you think that we hold life lightly in the East--that
+it is a characteristic of civilisation to make life more sacred, to
+cherish it more fondly?"
+
+He was sitting beside David, and though he asked the question casually,
+and with apparent intention only of keeping talk going, there was a
+lurking inquisition in his eye.  He had seen enough to-night to make him
+sure that Kaid had once more got the idea of making a European his
+confidant and adviser; to introduce to his court one of those mad
+Englishmen who cared nothing for gold--only for power; who loved
+administration for the sake of administration and the foolish joy of
+labour.  He was now set to see what sort of match this intellect could
+play, when faced by the inherent contradictions present in all truths or
+the solutions of all problems.
+
+"It is one of the characteristics of that which lies behind civilisation,
+as thee and me have been taught," answered David.
+
+Nahoum was quick in strategy, but he was unprepared for David's knowledge
+that he was an Armenian Christian, and he had looked for another answer.
+
+But he kept his head and rose to the occasion.  "Ah, it is high, it is
+noble, to save life--it is so easy to destroy it," he answered.  "I saw
+his Highness put his life in danger once to save a dog from drowning.  To
+cherish the lives of others, and to be careless of our own; to give that
+of great value as though it were of no worth--is it not the Great
+Lesson?"  He said it with such an air of sincerity, with such
+dissimulation, that, for the moment, David was deceived.  There was,
+however, on the face of the listening Kaid a curious, cynical smile.
+He had heard all, and he knew the sardonic meaning behind Nahoum's words.
+
+Fat High Pasha, the Chief Chamberlain, the corrupt and corruptible,
+intervened.  "It is not so hard to be careless when care would be
+useless," he said, with a chuckle.  "When the khamsin blows the dust-
+storms upon the caravan, the camel-driver hath no care for his camels.
+'Malaish!' he says, and buries his face in his yelek."
+
+"Life is beautiful and so difficult--to save," observed Nahoum, in a tone
+meant to tempt David on one hand and to reach the ears of the notorious
+Achmet Pasha, whose extortions, cruelties, and taxations had built his
+master's palaces, bribed his harem, given him money to pay the interest
+on his European loans, and made himself the richest man in Egypt, whose
+spies were everywhere, whose shadow was across every man's path.  Kaid
+might slay, might toss a pasha or a slave into the Nile now and then,
+might invite a Bey to visit him, and stroke his beard and call him
+brother and put diamond-dust in the coffee he drank, so that he died
+before two suns came and went again, "of inflammation and a natural
+death"; but he, Achmet Pasha, was the dark Inquisitor who tortured every
+day, for whose death all men prayed, and whom some would have slain, but
+that another worse than himself might succeed him.
+
+At Nahoum's words the dusky brown of Achmet's face turned as black as the
+sudden dilation of the pupil of an eye deepens its hue, and he said with
+a guttural accent:
+
+"Every man hath a time to die."
+
+"But not his own time," answered Nahoum maliciously.
+
+"It would appear that in Egypt he hath not always the choice of the
+fashion or the time," remarked David calmly.  He had read the malice
+behind their words, and there had flashed into his own mind tales told
+him, with every circumstance of accuracy, of deaths within and without
+the Palace.  Also he was now aware that Nahoum had mocked him.  He was
+concerned to make it clear that he was not wholly beguiled.
+
+"Is there, then, for a man choice of fashion or time in England,
+effendi?" asked Nahoum, with assumed innocence.
+
+"In England it is a matter between the Giver and Taker of life and
+himself--save where murder does its work," said David.
+
+"And here it is between man and man--is it that you would say?" asked
+Nahoum.
+
+"There seem wider privileges here," answered David drily.
+
+"Accidents will happen, privileges or no," rejoined Nahoum, with lowering
+eyelids.
+
+The Prince intervened.  "Thy own faith forbids the sword, forbids war,
+or--punishment."
+
+"The Prophet I follow was called the Prince of Peace, friend," answered
+David, bowing gravely across the table.
+
+"Hast thou never killed a man?" asked Kaid, with interest in his eyes.
+He asked the question as a man might ask another if he had never visited
+Paris.
+
+"Never, by the goodness of God, never," answered David.
+
+"Neither in punishment nor in battle?"
+
+"I am neither judge nor soldier, friend."
+
+"Inshallah, thou hast yet far to go!  Thou art young yet.  Who can tell?"
+
+"I have never so far to go as that, friend," said David, in a voice that
+rang a little.
+
+"To-morrow is no man's gift."
+
+David was about to answer, but chancing to raise his eyes above the
+Prince Pasha's head, his glance was arrested and startled by seeing a
+face--the face of a woman-looking out of a panel in a mooshrabieh screen
+in a gallery above.  He would not have dwelt upon the incident, he would
+have set it down to the curiosity of a woman of the harem, but that the
+face looking out was that of an English girl, and peering over her
+shoulder was the dark, handsome face of an Egyptian or a Turk.
+
+Self-control was the habit of his life, the training of his faith,
+and, as a rule, his face gave little evidence of inner excitement.
+Demonstration was discouraged, if not forbidden, among the Quakers, and
+if, to others, it gave a cold and austere manner, in David it tempered to
+a warm stillness the powerful impulses in him, the rivers of feeling
+which sometimes roared through his veins.
+
+Only Nahoum Pasha had noticed his arrested look, so motionless did he
+sit; and now, without replying, he bowed gravely and deferentially to
+Kaid, who rose from the table.  He followed with the rest.  Presently the
+Prince sent Higli Pasha to ask his nearer presence.
+
+The Prince made a motion of his hand, and the circle withdrew.  He waved
+David to a seat.
+
+"To-morrow thy business shall be settled," said the Prince suavely, "and
+on such terms as will not startle.  Death-tribute is no new thing in the
+East.  It is fortunate for thee that the tribute is from thy hand to my
+hand, and not through many others to mine."
+
+"I am conscious I have been treated with favour, friend," said David.
+"I would that I might show thee kindness.  Though how may a man of no
+account make return to a great Prince?"
+
+"By the beard of my father, it is easily done, if thy kindness is a real
+thing, and not that which makes me poorer the more I have of it--as
+though one should be given a herd of horses which must not be sold but
+still must be fed."
+
+"I have given thee truth.  Is not truth cheaper than falsehood?"
+
+"It is the most expensive thing in Egypt; so that I despair of buying
+thee.  Yet I would buy thee to remain here--here at my court; here by my
+hand which will give thee the labour thou lovest, and will defend thee if
+defence be needed.  Thou hast not greed, thou hast no thirst for honour,
+yet thou hast wisdom beyond thy years.  Kaid has never besought men, but
+he beseeches thee.  Once there was in Egypt, Joseph, a wise youth, who
+served a Pharaoh, and was his chief counsellor, and it was well with the
+land.  Thy name is a good name; well-being may follow thee.  The ages
+have gone, and the rest of the world has changed, but Egypt is the same
+Egypt, the Nile rises and falls, and the old lean years and fat years
+come and go.  Though I am in truth a Turk, and those who serve and rob me
+here are Turks, yet the fellah is the same as he was five thousand years
+ago.  What Joseph the Israelite did, thou canst do; for I am no more
+unjust than was that Rameses whom Joseph served.  Wilt thou stay with
+me?"
+
+David looked at Kaid as though he would read in his face the reply that
+he must make, but he did not see Kaid; he saw, rather, the face of one he
+had loved more than Jonathan had been loved by the young shepherd-prince
+of Israel.  In his ears he heard the voice that had called him in his
+sleep-the voice of Benn Claridge; and, at the same instant, there flashed
+into his mind a picture of himself fighting outside the tavern beyond
+Hamley and bidding farewell to the girl at the crossroads.
+
+"Friend, I cannot answer thee now," he said, in a troubled voice.
+
+Kaid rose.  "I will give thee an hour to think upon it.  Come with me."
+He stepped forward.  "To-morrow I will answer thee, Kaid."
+
+"To-morrow there is work for thee to do.  Come."  David followed him.
+
+The eyes that followed the Prince and the Quaker were not friendly.  What
+Kaid had long foreshadowed seemed at hand: the coming of a European
+counsellor and confidant.  They realised that in the man who had just
+left the room with Kaid there were characteristics unlike those they had
+ever met before in Europeans.
+
+"A madman," whispered High Pasha to Achmet the Ropemaker.
+
+"Then his will be the fate of the swine of Gadarene," said Nahoum Pasha,
+who had heard.
+
+"At least one need not argue with a madman."  The face of Achmet the
+Ropemaker was not more pleasant than his dark words.
+
+"It is not the madman with whom you have to deal, but his keeper,"
+rejoined Nahoum.
+
+Nahoum's face was heavier than usual.  Going to weight, he was still
+muscular and well groomed.  His light brown beard and hair and blue eyes
+gave him a look almost Saxon, and bland power spoke in his face and in
+every gesture.
+
+He was seldom without the string of beads so many Orientals love to
+carry, and, Armenian Christian as he was, the act seemed almost
+religious.  It was to him, however, like a ground-wire in telegraphy--
+it carried off the nervous force tingling in him and driving him to
+impulsive action, while his reputation called for a constant outward
+urbanity, a philosophical apathy.  He had had his great fight for place
+and power, alien as he was in religion, though he had lived in Egypt
+since a child.  Bar to progress as his religion had been at first, it had
+been an advantage afterwards; for, through it, he could exclude himself
+from complications with the Wakfs, the religious court of the Muslim
+creed, which had lands to administer, and controlled the laws of marriage
+and inheritance.  He could shrug his shoulders and play with his beads,
+and urbanely explain his own helplessness and ineligibility when his
+influence was summoned, or it was sought to entangle him in warring
+interests.  Oriental through and through, the basis of his creed was
+similar to that of a Muslim: Mahomet was a prophet and Christ was a
+prophet.  It was a case of rival prophets--all else was obscured into a
+legend, and he saw the strife of race in the difference of creed.  For
+the rest, he flourished the salutations and language of the Arab as
+though they were his own, and he spoke Arabic as perfectly as he did
+French and English.
+
+He was the second son of his father.  The first son, who was but a year
+older, and was as dark as he was fair, had inherited--had seized--all his
+father's wealth.  He had lived abroad for some years in France and
+England.  In the latter place he had been one of the Turkish Embassy,
+and, having none of the outward characteristics of the Turk, and being
+in appearance more of a Spaniard than an Oriental, he had, by his gifts,
+his address and personal appearance, won the good-will of the Duchess of
+Middlesex, and had had that success all too flattering to the soul of a
+libertine.  It had, however, been the means of his premature retirement
+from England, for his chief at the Embassy had a preference for an
+Oriental entourage.  He was called Foorgat Bey.
+
+Sitting at table, Nahoum alone of all present had caught David's arrested
+look, and, glancing up, had seen the girl's face at the panel of
+mooshrabieh, and had seen also over her shoulder the face of his brother,
+Foorgat Bey.  He had been even more astonished than David, and far more
+disturbed.  He knew his brother's abilities; he knew his insinuating
+address--had he not influenced their father to give him wealth while he
+was yet alive?  He was aware also that his brother had visited the Palace
+often of late.  It would seem as though the Prince Pasha was ready to
+make him, as well as David, a favourite.  But the face of the girl--it
+was an English face!  Familiar with the Palace, and bribing when it was
+necessary to bribe, Foorgat Bey had evidently brought her to see the
+function, there where all women were forbidden.  He could little imagine
+Foorgat doing this from mere courtesy; he could not imagine any woman,
+save one wholly sophisticated, or one entirely innocent, trusting herself
+with him--and in such a place.  The girl's face, though not that of one
+in her teens, had seemed to him a very flower of innocence.
+
+But, as he stood telling his beads, abstractedly listening to the scandal
+talked by Achmet and Higli, he was not thinking of his brother, but of
+the two who had just left the chamber.  He was speculating as to which
+room they were likely to enter.  They had not gone by the door convenient
+to passage to Kaid's own apartments.  He would give much to hear the
+conversation between Kaid and the stranger; he was all too conscious of
+its purport.  As he stood thinking, Kaid returned.  After looking round
+the room for a moment, the Prince came slowly over to Nahoum, and,
+stretching out a hand, stroked his beard.
+
+"Oh, brother of all the wise, may thy sun never pass its noon!" said
+Kaid, in a low, friendly voice.
+
+Despite his will, a shudder passed through Nahoum Pasha's frame.
+How often in Egypt this gesture and such words were the prelude to
+assassination, from which there was no escape save by death itself.  Into
+Nahoum's mind there flashed the words of an Arab teacher, "There is no
+refuge from God but God Himself," and he found himself blindly wondering,
+even as he felt Kaid's hand upon his beard and listened to the honeyed
+words, what manner of death was now preparing for him, and what death of
+his own contriving should intervene.  Escape, he knew, there was none, if
+his death was determined on; for spies were everywhere, and slaves in the
+pay of Kaid were everywhere, and such as were not could be bought or
+compelled, even if he took refuge in the house of a foreign consul.  The
+lean, invisible, ghastly arm of death could find him, if Kaid willed,
+though he delved in the bowels of the Cairene earth, or climbed to an
+eagle's eyrie in the Libyan Hills.  Whether it was diamond-dust or
+Achmet's thin thong that stopped the breath, it mattered not; it was
+sure.  Yet he was not of the breed to tremble under the descending sword,
+and he had long accustomed himself to the chance of "sudden demise."  It
+had been chief among the chances he had taken when he entered the high
+and perilous service of Kaid.  Now, as he felt the secret joy of these
+dark spirits surrounding him--Achmet, and High Pasha, who kept saying
+beneath his breath in thankfulness that it was not his turn, Praise be to
+God!--as he, felt their secret self-gratulations, and their evil joy over
+his prospective downfall, he settled himself steadily, made a low
+salutation to Kaid, and calmly awaited further speech.  It came soon
+enough.
+
+"It is written upon a cucumber leaf--does not the world read it?--that
+Nahoum Pasha's form shall cast a longer shadow than the trees; so that
+every man in Egypt shall, thinking on him, be as covetous as Ashaah, who
+knew but one thing more covetous than himself--the sheep that mistook the
+rainbow for a rope of hay, and, jumping for it, broke his neck."
+
+Kaid laughed softly at his own words.
+
+With his eye meeting Kaid's again, after a low salaam, Nahoum made
+answer:
+
+"I would that the lance of my fame might sheathe itself in the breasts of
+thy enemies, Effendina."
+
+"Thy tongue does that office well," was the reply.  Once more Kaid laid
+a gentle hand upon Nahoum's beard.  Then, with a gesture towards the
+consuls and Europeans, he said to them in French: "If I might but beg
+your presence for yet a little time!"  Then he turned and walked away.
+He left by a door leading to his own apartments.
+
+When he had gone, Nahoum swung slowly round and faced the agitated
+groups.
+
+"He who sleeps with one eye open sees the sun rise first," he said, with
+a sarcastic laugh.  "He who goes blindfold never sees it set."
+
+Then, with a complacent look upon them all, he slowly left the room by
+the door out of which David and Kaid had first passed.
+
+Outside the room his face did not change.  His manner had not been
+bravado.  It was as natural to him as David's manner was to himself.
+Each had trained himself in his own way to the mastery of his will, and
+the will in each was stronger than any passion of emotion in them.  So
+far at least it had been so.  In David it was the outcome of his faith,
+in Nahoum it was the outcome of his philosophy, a simple, fearless
+fatalism.
+
+David had been left by Kaid in a small room, little more than an alcove,
+next to a larger room richly furnished.  Both rooms belonged to a
+spacious suite which lay between the harem and the major portion of the
+Palace.  It had its own entrance and exits from the Palace, opening on
+the square at the front, at the back opening on its own garden, which
+also had its own exits to the public road.  The quarters of the Chief
+Eunuch separated the suite from the harem, and Mizraim, the present Chief
+Eunuch, was a man of power in the Palace, knew more secrets, was more
+courted, and was richer than some of the princes.  Nahoum had an office
+in the Palace, also, which gave him the freedom of the place, and brought
+him often in touch with the Chief Eunuch.  He had made Mizraim a fast
+friend ever since the day he had, by an able device, saved the Chief
+Eunuch from determined robbery by the former Prince Pasha, with whom he
+had suddenly come out of favour.
+
+When Nahoum left the great salon, he directed his steps towards the
+quarters of the Chief Eunuch, thinking of David, with a vague desire for
+pursuit and conflict.  He was too much of a philosopher to seek to do
+David physical injury--a futile act; for it could do him no good in the
+end, could not mend his own fortunes; and, merciless as he could be on
+occasion, he had no love of bloodshed.  Besides, the game afoot was not
+of his making, and he was ready to await the finish, the more so because
+he was sure that to-morrow would bring forth momentous things.  There was
+a crisis in the Soudan, there was trouble in the army, there was dark
+conspiracy of which he knew the heart, and anything might happen
+to-morrow!  He had yet some cards to play, and Achmet and Higli--and
+another very high and great--might be delivered over to Kaid's deadly
+purposes rather than himself tomorrow.  What he knew Kaid did not know.
+He had not meant to act yet; but new facts faced him, and he must make
+one struggle for his life.  But as he went towards Mizraim's quarters he
+saw no sure escape from the stage of those untoward events, save by the
+exit which is for all in some appointed hour.
+
+He was not, however, more perplexed and troubled than David, who, in the
+little room where he had been brought and left alone with coffee and
+cigarettes, served by a slave from some distant portion of the Palace,
+sat facing his future.
+
+David looked round the little room.  Upon the walls hung weapons of every
+kind--from a polished dagger of Toledo to a Damascus blade, suits of
+chain armour, long-handled, two-edged Arab swords, pistols which had been
+used in the Syrian wars of Ibrahim, lances which had been taken from the
+Druses at Palmyra, rude battle-axes from the tribes of the Soudan, and
+neboots of dom-wood which had done service against Napoleon at Damietta.
+The cushions among which he sat had come from Constantinople, the rug at
+his feet from Tiflis, the prayer-rug on the wall from Mecca.
+
+All that he saw was as unlike what he had known in past years as though
+he had come to Mars or Jupiter.  All that he had heard recalled to him
+his first readings in the Old Testament--the story of Nebuchadnezzar, of
+Belshazzar, of Ahasuerus--of Ahasuerus!  He suddenly remembered the face
+he had seen looking down at the Prince's table from the panel of
+mooshrabieh.  That English face--where was it?  Why was it there?  Who
+was the man with her?  Whose the dark face peering scornfully over her
+shoulder?  The face of an English girl in that place dedicated to sombre
+intrigue, to the dark effacement of women, to the darker effacement of
+life, as he well knew, all too often!  In looking at this prospect for
+good work in the cause of civilisation, he was not deceived, he was not
+allured.  He knew into what subterranean ways he must walk, through what
+mazes of treachery and falsehood he must find his way; and though he did
+not know to the full the corruption which it was his duty to Kaid to turn
+to incorruption, he knew enough to give his spirit pause.  What would be
+--what could be--the end?  Would he not prove to be as much out of place
+as was the face of that English girl?  The English girl!  England rushed
+back upon him--the love of those at home; of his father, the only father
+he had ever known; of Faith, the only mother or sister he had ever known;
+of old John Fairley; the love of the woods and the hills where he had
+wandered came upon him.  There was work to do in England, work too little
+done--the memory of the great meeting at Heddington flashed upon him.
+Could his labour and his skill, if he had any, not be used there?  Ah,
+the green fields, the soft grey skies, the quiet vale, the brave, self-
+respecting, toiling millions, the beautiful sense of law and order and
+goodness!  Could his gifts and labours not be used there?  Could not--
+
+He was suddenly startled by a smothered cry, then a call of distress.
+It was the voice of a woman.
+
+He started up.  The voice seemed to come from a room at his right; not
+that from which he had entered, but one still beyond this where he was.
+He sprang towards the wall and examined it swiftly.  Finding a division
+in the tapestry, he ran his fingers quickly and heavily down the crack
+between.  It came upon the button of a spring.  He pressed it, the door
+yielded, and, throwing it back, he stepped into the room-to see a woman
+struggling to resist the embraces and kisses of a man.  The face was that
+of the girl who had looked out of the panel in the mooshrabieh screen.
+Then it was beautiful in its mirth and animation, now it was pale and
+terror-stricken, as with one free hand she fiercely beat the face pressed
+to hers.
+
+The girl only had seen David enter.  The man was not conscious of his
+presence till he was seized and flung against the wall.  The violence of
+the impact brought down at his feet two weapons from the wall above him.
+He seized one-a dagger-and sprang to his feet.  Before he could move
+forward or raise his arm, however, David struck him a blow in the neck
+which flung him upon a square marble pedestal intended for a statue.  In
+falling his head struck violently a sharp corner of the pedestal.  He
+lurched, rolled over on the floor, and lay still.
+
+The girl gave a choking cry.  David quickly stooped and turned the body
+over.  There was a cut where the hair met the temple.  He opened the
+waistcoat and thrust his hand inside the shirt.  Then he felt the pulse
+of the limp wrist.
+
+For a moment he looked at the face steadily, almost contemplatively it
+might have seemed, and then drew both arms close to the body.
+
+Foorgat Bey, the brother of Nahoum Pasha, was dead.
+
+Rising, David turned, as if in a dream, to the girl.  He made a motion of
+the hand towards the body.  She understood.  Dismay was in her face, but
+the look of horror and desperation was gone.  She seemed not to realise,
+as did David, the awful position in which they were placed, the deed
+which David had done, the significance of the thing that lay at their
+feet.
+
+"Where are thy people?" said David.  "Come, we will go to them."
+
+"I have no people here," she said, in a whisper.
+
+"Who brought thee?"
+
+She made a motion behind her towards the body.  David glanced down.  The
+eyes of the dead man were open.  He stooped and closed them gently.  The
+collar and tie were disarranged; he straightened them, then turned again
+to her.
+
+"I must take thee away," he said calmly.  "But it must be secretly."  He
+looked around, perplexed.  "We came secretly.  My maid is outside the
+garden--in a carriage.  Oh, come, let us go, let us escape.  They will
+kill you--!"  Terror came into her face again.  "Thee, not me, is in
+danger--name, goodness, future, all.  .  .  .  Which way did thee come?"
+
+"Here--through many rooms--" She made a gesture to curtains beyond.
+"But we first entered through doors with sphinxes on either side,
+with a room where was a statue of Mehemet Ali."
+
+It was the room through which David had come with Kaid.  He took her
+hand.  "Come quickly.  I know the way.  It is here," he said, pointing to
+the panel-door by which he had entered.
+
+Holding her hand still, as though she were a child, he led her quickly
+from the room, and shut the panel behind them.  As they passed through,
+a hand drew aside the curtains on the other side of the room which they
+were leaving.
+
+Presently the face of Nahoum Pasha followed the hand.  A swift glance to
+the floor, then he ran forward, stooped down, and laid a hand on his
+brother's breast.  The slight wound on the forehead answered his rapid
+scrutiny.  He realised the situation as plainly as if it had been written
+down for him--he knew his brother well.
+
+Noiselessly he moved forward and touched the spring of the door through
+which the two had gone.  It yielded, and he passed through, closed the
+door again and stealthily listened, then stole a look into the farther
+chamber.  It was empty.  He heard the outer doors close.  For a moment he
+listened, then went forward and passed through into the hall.  Softly
+turning the handle of the big wooden doors which faced him, he opened
+them an inch or so, and listened.  He could hear swiftly retreating
+footsteps.  Presently he heard the faint noise of a gate shutting.  He
+nodded his head, and was about to close the doors and turn away, when his
+quick ear detected footsteps again in the garden.  Some one--the man,
+of course--was returning.
+
+"May fire burn his eyes for ever!  He would talk with Kald, then go again
+among them all, and so pass out unsuspected and safe.  For who but I--who
+but I could say he did it?  And I--what is my proof?  Only the words
+which I speak."
+
+A scornful, fateful smile passed over his face.  "'Hast thou never killed
+a man?' said Kaid.  'Never,' said he--'by the goodness of God, never!'
+The voice of Him of Galilee, the hand of Cain, the craft of Jael.  But
+God is with the patient."
+
+He went hastily and noiselessly-his footfall was light for so heavy a
+man-through the large room to the farther side from that by which David
+and Kaid had first entered.  Drawing behind a clump of palms near a door
+opening to a passage leading to Mizraim's quarters, he waited.  He saw
+David enter quickly, yet without any air of secrecy, and pass into the
+little room where Kaid had left him.
+
+For a long time there was silence.
+
+The reasons were clear in Nahoum's mind why he should not act yet.  A new
+factor had changed the equation which had presented itself a short half
+hour ago.
+
+A new factor had also entered into the equation which had been presented
+to David by Kaid with so flattering an insistence.  He sat in the place
+where Kaid had left him, his face drawn and white, his eyes burning, but
+with no other "sign of agitation.  He was frozen and still.  His look was
+fastened now upon the door by which the Prince Pasha would enter, now
+upon the door through which he had passed to the rescue of the English
+girl, whom he had seen drive off safely with her maid.  In their swift
+passage from the Palace to the carriage, a thing had been done of even
+greater moment than the killing of the sensualist in the next room.  In
+the journey to the gateway the girl David served had begged him to escape
+with her.  This he had almost sharply declined; it would be no escape, he
+had said.  She had urged that no one knew.  He had replied that Kaid
+would come again for him, and suspicion would be aroused if he were gone.
+
+"Thee has safety," he had said.  "I will go back.  I will say that I
+killed him.  I have taken a life, I will pay for it as is the law."
+
+Excited as she was, she had seen the inflexibility of his purpose.  She
+had seen the issue also clearly.  He would give himself up, and the whole
+story would be the scandal of Europe.
+
+"You have no right to save me only to kill me," she had said desperately.
+"You would give your life, but you would destroy that which is more than
+life to me.  You did not intend to kill him.  It was no murder, it was
+punishment."  Her voice had got harder.  "He would have killed my life
+because he was evil.  Will you kill it because you are good?  Will you be
+brave, quixotic, but not pitiful?  .  .  .  No, no, no!" she had said,
+as his hand was upon the gate, "I will not go unless you promise that you
+will hide the truth, if you can."  She had laid her hand upon his
+shoulder with an agonised impulse.  "You will hide it for a girl who will
+cherish your memory her whole life long.  Ah--God bless you!"
+
+She had felt that she conquered before he spoke as, indeed, he did not
+speak, but nodded his head and murmured something indistinctly.  But that
+did not matter, for she had won; she had a feeling that all would be
+well.  Then he had placed her in her carriage, and she was driven swiftly
+away, saying to herself half hysterically: "I am safe, I am safe.  He
+will keep his word."
+
+Her safety and his promise were the new factor which changed the equation
+for which Kaid would presently ask the satisfaction.  David's life had
+suddenly come upon problems for which his whole past was no preparation.
+Conscience, which had been his guide in every situation, was now
+disarmed, disabled, and routed.  It had come to terms.
+
+In going quickly through the room, they had disarranged a table.  The
+girl's cloak had swept over it, and a piece of brie-a-brae had been
+thrown upon the floor.  He got up and replaced it with an attentive air.
+He rearranged the other pieces on the table mechanically, seeing, feeling
+another scene, another inanimate thing which must be for ever and for
+ever a picture burning in his memory.  Yet he appeared to be casually
+doing a trivial and necessary act.  He did not definitely realise his
+actions; but long afterwards he could have drawn an accurate plan of the
+table, could have reproduced upon it each article in its exact place as
+correctly as though it had been photographed.  There were one or two
+spots of dust or dirt on the floor, brought in by his boots from the
+garden.  He flicked them aside with his handkerchief.
+
+How still it was!  Or was it his life which had become so still?  It
+seemed as if the world must be noiseless, for not a sound of the life in
+other parts of the Palace came to him, not an echo or vibration of the
+city which stirred beyond the great gateway.  Was it the chilly hand of
+death passing over everything, and smothering all the activities?  His
+pulses, which, but a few minutes past, were throbbing and pounding like
+drums in his ears, seemed now to flow and beat in very quiet.  Was this,
+then, the way that murderers felt, that men felt who took human life--so
+frozen, so little a part of their surroundings?  Did they move as dead
+men among the living, devitalised, vacuous calm?
+
+His life had been suddenly twisted out of recognition.  All that his
+habit, his code, his morals, his religion, had imposed upon him had been
+overturned in one moment.  To take a human life, even in battle, was
+against the code by which he had ever been governed, yet he had taken
+life secretly, and was hiding it from the world.
+
+Accident?  But had it been necessary to strike at all?  His presence
+alone would have been enough to save the girl from further molestation;
+but, he had thrown himself upon the man like a tiger.  Yet, somehow, he
+felt no sorrow for that.  He knew that if again and yet again he were
+placed in the same position he would do even as he had done--even as he
+had done with the man Kimber by the Fox and Goose tavern beyond Hamley.
+He knew that the blow he had given then was inevitable, and he had never
+felt real repentance.  Thinking of that blow, he saw its sequel in the
+blow he had given now.  Thus was that day linked with the present, thus
+had a blow struck in punishment of the wrong done the woman at the
+crossroads been repeated in the wrong done the girl who had just left
+him.
+
+A sound now broke the stillness.  It was a door shutting not far off.
+Kaid was coming.  David turned his face towards the room where Foorgat
+Bey was lying dead.  He lifted his arms with a sudden passionate gesture.
+The blood came rushing through his veins again.  His life, which had
+seemed suspended, was set free; and an exaltation of sorrow, of pain, of
+action, possessed him.
+
+"I have taken a life, O my God!" he murmured.  "Accept mine in service
+for this land.  What I have done in secret, let me atone for in secret,
+for this land--for this poor land, for Christ's sake!"
+
+Footsteps were approaching quickly.  With a great effort of the will he
+ruled himself to quietness again.  Kaid entered, and stood before him in
+silence.  David rose.  He looked Kaid steadily in the eyes.  "Well?"
+said Kaid placidly.
+
+"For Egypt's sake I will serve thee," was the reply.  He held out his
+hand.  Kaid took it, but said, in smiling comment on the action: "As the
+Viceroy's servant there is another way!"
+
+"I will salaam to-morrow, Kaid," answered David.
+
+"It is the only custom of the place I will require of thee, effendi.
+Come."
+
+A few moments later they were standing among the consuls and officials in
+the salon.
+
+"Where is Nahoum?" asked Kaid, looking round on the agitated throng.
+
+No one answered.  Smiling, Kaid whispered in David's ear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE COMPACT
+
+One by one the lights went out in the Palace.  The excited guests were
+now knocking at the doors of Cairene notables, bent upon gossip of the
+night's events, or were scouring the bazaars for ears into which to pour
+the tale of how David was exalted and Nahoum was brought low; how, before
+them all, Kaid had commanded Nahoum to appear at the Palace in the
+morning at eleven, and the Inglesi, as they had named David, at ten.  But
+they declared to all who crowded upon their words that the Inglesi left
+the Palace with a face frozen white, as though it was he that had met
+debacle, while Nahoum had been as urbane and cynical as though he had
+come to the fulness of his power.
+
+Some, on hearing this, said: "Beware Nahoum!"  But those who had been at
+the Palace said: "Beware the Inglesi!"  This still Quaker, with the white
+shining face and pontifical hat, with his address of "thee" and "thou,"
+and his forms of speech almost Oriental in their imagery and simplicity,
+himself an archaism, had impressed them with a sense of power.  He had
+prompted old Diaz Pasha to speak of him as a reincarnation, so separate
+and withdrawn he seemed at the end of the evening, yet with an uncanny
+mastery in his dark brown eyes.  One of the Ulema, or holy men, present
+had said in reply to Diaz: "It is the look of one who hath walked with
+Death and bought and sold with Sheitan the accursed."  To Nahoum Pasha,
+Dim had said, as the former left the Palace, a cigarette between his
+fingers: "Sleep not nor slumber, Nahoum.  The world was never lost by one
+earthquake."  And Nahoum had replied with a smooth friendliness: "The
+world is not reaped in one harvest."
+
+"The day is at hand--the East against the West," murmured old Diaz, as he
+passed on.
+
+"The day is far spent," answered Nahoum, in a voice unheard by Diaz; and,
+with a word to his coachman, who drove off quickly, he disappeared in the
+shrubbery.
+
+A few minutes later he was tapping at the door of Mizraim, the Chief
+Eunuch.  Three times he tapped in the same way.  Presently the door
+opened, and he stepped inside.  The lean, dark figure of Mizraim bowed
+low; the long, slow fingers touched the forehead, the breast, and the
+lips.
+
+"May God preserve thy head from harm, excellency, and the night give thee
+sleep," said Mizraim.  He looked inquiringly at Nahoum.
+
+"May thy head know neither heat nor cold, and thy joys increase,"
+responded Nahoum mechanically, and sat down.
+
+To an European it would have seemed a shameless mockery to have wished
+joy to this lean, hateful dweller in the between-worlds; to Nahoum it was
+part of a life which was all ritual and intrigue, gabbling superstition
+and innate fatalism, decorated falsehood and a brave philosophy.
+
+"I have work for thee at last, Mizraim," said Nahoum.
+
+"At last?"
+
+"Thou hast but played before.  To-night I must see the sweat of thy
+brow."
+
+Mizraim's cold fingers again threw themselves against his breast,
+forehead, and lips, and he said:
+
+"As a woman swims in a fountain, so shall I bathe in sweat for thee, who
+hath given with one hand and hath never taken with the other."
+
+"I did thee service once, Mizraim--eh?"
+
+"I was as a bird buffeted by the wind; upon thy masts my feet found rest.
+Behold, I build my nest in thy sails, excellency."
+
+"There are no birds in last year's nest, Mizraim, thou dove," said
+Nahoum, with a cynical smile.  "When I build, I build.  Where I swear by
+the stone of the corner, there am I from dark to dark and from dawn to
+dawn, pasha."  Suddenly he swept his hand low to the ground and a ghastly
+sort of smile crossed over his face.  "Speak--I am thy servant.  Shall I
+not hear?  I will put my hand in the entrails of Egypt, and wrench them
+forth for thee."
+
+He made a gesture so cruelly, so darkly, suggestive that Nahoum turned
+his head away.  There flashed before his mind the scene of death in which
+his own father had lain, butchered like a beast in the shambles, a victim
+to the rage of Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Mehemet Ali.
+
+"Then listen, and learn why I have need of thee to-night."
+
+First, Nahoum told the story of David's coming, and Kaid's treatment of
+himself, the foreshadowing of his own doom.  Then of David and the girl,
+and the dead body he had seen; of the escape of the girl, of David's
+return with Kaid--all exactly as it had happened, save that he did; not
+mention the name of the dead man.
+
+It did not astonish Mizraim that Nahoum had kept all this secret.  That
+crime should be followed by secrecy and further crime, if need be, seems
+natural to the Oriental mind.  Mizraim had seen removal follow upon
+removal, and the dark Nile flowed on gloomily, silently, faithful to the
+helpless ones tossed into its bosom.  It would much have astonished him
+if Nahoum had not shown a gaping darkness somewhere in his tale, and he
+felt for the key to the mystery.
+
+"And he who lies dead, excellency?"
+
+"My brother."
+
+"Foorgat Bey!"
+
+"Even he, Mizraim.  He lured the girl here--a mad man ever.  The other
+madman was in the next room.  He struck--come, and thou shalt see."
+
+Together they felt their way through the passages and rooms, and
+presently entered the room where Foorgat Bey was lying.  Nahoum struck a
+light, and, as he held the candle, Mizraim knelt and examined the body
+closely.  He found the slight wound on the temple, then took the candle
+from Nahoum and held it close to the corner of the marble pedestal.  A
+faint stain of blood was there.  Again he examined the body, and ran his
+fingers over the face and neck.  Suddenly he stopped, and held the light
+close to the skin beneath the right jaw.  He motioned, and Nahoum laid
+his fingers also on the spot.  There was a slight swelling.
+
+"A blow with the fist, excellency--skilful, and English."  He looked
+inquiringly at Nahoum.  "As a weasel hath a rabbit by the throat, so is
+the Inglesi in thy hands."
+
+Nahoum shook his head.  "And if I went to Kaid, and said, 'This is the
+work of the Inglesi,' would he believe?  Kaid would hang me for the lie--
+would it be truth to him?  What proof have I, save the testimony
+of mine own eyes?  Egypt would laugh at that.  Is it the time, while
+yet the singers are beneath the windows, to assail the bride?  All
+bridegrooms are mad.  It is all sunshine and morning with the favourite,
+the Inglesi.  Only when the shadows lengthen may he be stricken.  Not
+now."
+
+"Why dost thou hide this from Kaid, O thou brother of the eagle?"
+
+"For my gain and thine, keeper of the gate.  To-night I am weak, because
+I am poor.  To-morrow I shall be rich and, it may be, strong.  If Kaid
+knew of this tonight, I should be a prisoner before cockcrow.  What
+claims has a prisoner?  Kaid would be in my brother's house at dawn,
+seizing all that is there and elsewhere, and I on my way to Fazougli, to
+be strangled or drowned."
+
+"O wise and far-seeing!  Thine eye pierces the earth.  What is there to
+do?  What is my gain--what thine?"
+
+"Thy gain?  The payment of thy debt to me."  Mizraim's face lengthened.
+His was a loathsome sort of gratitude.  He was willing to pay in kind;
+but what Oriental ever paid a debt without a gift in return, even as a
+bartering Irishman demands his lucky penny.
+
+"So be it, excellency, and my life is thine to spill upon the ground, a
+scarlet cloth for thy feet.  And backsheesh?"
+
+Nahoum smiled grimly.  "For backsheesh, thy turban full of gold."
+
+Mizraim's eyes glittered-the dull black shine of a mongrel terrier's.  He
+caught the sleeve of Nahoum's coat and kissed it, then kissed his hand.
+
+Thus was their bargain made over the dead body; and Mizraim had an almost
+superstitious reverence for the fulfilment of a bond, the one virtue
+rarely found in the Oriental.  Nothing else had he, but of all men in
+Egypt he was the best instrument Nahoum could have chosen; and of all men
+in Egypt he was the one man who could surely help him.
+
+"What is there now to do, excellency?"
+
+"My coachman is with the carriage at the gate by which the English girl
+left.  It is open still.  The key is in Foorgat's pocket, no doubt;
+stolen by him, no doubt also.  .  .  .  This is my design.  Thou wilt
+drive him"--he pointed to the body--"to his palace, seated in the
+carriage as though he were alive.  There is a secret entrance.  The bowab
+of the gate will show the way; I know it not.  But who will deny thee?
+Thou comest from high places--from Kaid.  Who will speak of this?  Will
+the bowab?  In the morning Foorgat will be found dead in his bed!  The
+slight bruise thou canst heal--thou canst?"
+
+Mizraim nodded.  "I can smooth it from the sharpest eye."
+
+"At dawn he will be found dead; but at dawn I shall be knocking at his
+gates.  Before the world knows I shall be in possession.  All that is his
+shall be mine, for at once the men of law shall be summoned, and my
+inheritance secured before Kaid shall even know of his death.  I shall
+take my chances for my life."
+
+"And the coachman, and the bowab, and others it may be?"
+
+"Shall not these be with thee--thou, Kaid's keeper of the harem, the lion
+at the door of his garden of women?  Would it be strange that Foorgat,
+who ever flew at fruit above his head, perilous to get or keep, should be
+found on forbidden ground, or in design upon it?  Would it be strange to
+the bowab or the slave that he should return with thee stark and still?
+They would but count it mercy of Kaid that he was not given to the
+serpents of the Nile.  A word from thee--would one open his mouth?  Would
+not the shadow of thy hand, of the swift doom, be over them?  Would not
+a handful of gold bind them to me?  Is not the man dead?  Are they not
+mine--mine to bind or break as I will?"
+
+"So be it!  Wisdom is of thee as the breath of man is his life.  I will
+drive Foorgat Bey to his home."
+
+A few moments later all that was left of Foorgat Bey was sitting in his
+carriage beside Mizraim the Chief Eunuch--sitting upright, stony, and
+still, and in such wise was driven swiftly to his palace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+FOR HIS SOUL'S SAKE AND THE LAND'S SAKE
+
+David came to know a startling piece of news the next morning-that
+Foorgat Bey had died of heart-disease in his bed, and was so found by his
+servants.  He at once surmised that Foorgat's body had been carried out
+of the Palace; no doubt that it might not be thought he had come to his
+death by command of Kaid.  His mind became easier.  Death, murder, crime
+in Egypt was not a nine days' wonder; it scarce outlived one day.  When a
+man was gone none troubled.  The dead man was in the bosom of Allah; then
+why should the living be beset or troubled?  If there was foul play, why
+make things worse by sending another life after the life gone, even in
+the way of justice?
+
+The girl David saved had told him her own name, and had given him the
+name of the hotel at which she was staying.  He had an early breakfast,
+and prepared to go to her hotel, wishing to see her once more.  There
+were things to be said for the first and last time and then be buried for
+ever.  She must leave the country at once.  In this sick, mad land, in
+this whirlpool of secret murder and conspiracy, no one could tell what
+plot was hatching, what deeds were forward; and he could not yet be sure
+that no one save himself and herself knew who had killed Foorgat Bey.
+Her perfect safety lay in instant flight.  It was his duty to see that
+she went, and at once--this very day.  He would go and see her.
+
+He went to the hotel.  There he learned that, with her aunt, she had left
+that morning for Alexandria en route to England.
+
+He approved her wisdom, he applauded her decision.  Yet--yet, somehow,
+as he bent his footsteps towards his lodgings again he had a sense of
+disappointment, of revelation.  What might happen to him--evidently that
+had not occurred to her.  How could she know but that his life might be
+in danger; that, after all, they might have been seen leaving the fatal
+room?  Well, she had gone, and with all his heart he was glad that she
+was safe.
+
+His judgment upon last night's event was not coloured by a single
+direct criticism upon the girl.  But he could not prevent the suggestion
+suddenly flashing into his mind that she had thought of herself first and
+last.  Well, she had gone; and he was here to face the future,
+unencumbered by aught save the weight of his own conscience.
+
+Yet, the weight of his conscience!  His feet were still free--free for
+one short hour before he went to Kaid; but his soul was in chains.  As he
+turned his course to the Nile, and crossed over the great bridge, there
+went clanking by in chains a hundred conscripts, torn from their homes in
+the Fayoum, bidding farewell for ever to their friends, receiving their
+last offerings, for they had no hope of return.  He looked at their
+haggard and dusty faces, at their excoriated ankles, and his eyes closed
+in pain.  All they felt he felt.  What their homes were to them, these
+fellaheen, dragged forth to defend their country, to go into the desert
+and waste their lives under leaders tyrannous, cruel, and incompetent,
+his old open life, his innocence, his integrity, his truthfulness and
+character, were to him.  By an impulsive act, by a rash blow, he had
+asserted his humanity; but he had killed his fellow-man in anger.  He
+knew that as that fatal blow had been delivered, there was no thought of
+punishment--it was blind anger and hatred: it was the ancient virus
+working which had filled the world with war, and armed it at the expense,
+the bitter and oppressive expense, of the toilers and the poor.  The
+taxes for wars were wrung out of the sons of labour and sorrow.  These
+poor fellaheen had paid taxes on everything they possessed.  Taxes,
+taxes, nothing but taxes from the cradle!  Their lands, houses, and palm-
+trees would be taxed still, when they would reap no more.  And having
+given all save their lives, these lives they must now give under the whip
+and the chain and the sword.
+
+As David looked at them in their single blue calico coverings, in which
+they had lived and slept-shivering in the cold night air upon the bare
+ground--these thoughts came to him; and he had a sudden longing to follow
+them and put the chains upon his own arms and legs, and go forth and
+suffer with them, and fight and die?  To die were easy.  To fight?. . . .
+Was it then come to that?  He was no longer a man of peace, but a man of
+the sword; no longer a man of the palm and the evangel, but a man of
+blood and of crime!  He shrank back out of the glare of the sun; for it
+suddenly seemed to him that there was written upon his fore head, "This
+is a brother of Cain."  For the first time in his life he had a shrinking
+from the light, and from the sun which he had loved like a Persian, had,
+in a sense, unconsciously worshipped.
+
+He was scarcely aware where he was.  He had wandered on until he had come
+to the end of the bridge and into the great groups of traffickers who, at
+this place, made a market of their wares.  Here sat a seller of sugar
+cane; there wandered, clanking his brasses, a merchant of sweet waters;
+there shouted a cheap-jack of the Nile the virtues of a knife from
+Sheffield.  Yonder a camel-driver squatted and counted his earnings; and
+a sheepdealer haggled with the owner of a ghiassa bound for the sands of
+the North.  The curious came about him and looked at him, but he did not
+see or hear.  He sat upon a stone, his gaze upon the river, following
+with his eyes, yet without consciously observing, the dark riverine
+population whose ways are hidden, who know only the law of the river and
+spend their lives in eluding itpirates and brigands now, and yet again
+the peaceful porters of commerce.
+
+To his mind, never a criminal in this land but less a criminal than he!
+For their standard was a standard of might the only right; but he--his
+whole life had been nurtured in an atmosphere of right and justice, had
+been a spiritual demonstration against force.  He was with out fear, as
+he was without an undue love of life.  The laying down of his life had
+never been presented to him; and yet, now that his conscience was his
+only judge, and it condemned him, he would gladly have given his life to
+pay the price of blood.
+
+That was impossible.  His life was not his own to give, save by suicide;
+and that would be the unpardonable insult to God and humanity.  He had
+given his word to the woman, and he would keep it.  In those brief
+moments she must have suffered more than most men suffer in a long life.
+Not her hand, however, but his, had committed the deed.  And yet a sudden
+wave of pity for her rushed over him, because the conviction seized him
+that she would also in her heart take upon herself the burden of his
+guilt as though it were her own.  He had seen it in the look of her face
+last night.
+
+For the sake of her future it was her duty to shield herself from any
+imputation which might as unjustly as scandalously arise, if the facts of
+that black hour ever became known.  Ever became known?  The thought that
+there might be some human eye which had seen, which knew, sent a shiver
+through him.
+
+"I would give my life a thousand times rather than that," he said aloud
+to the swift-flowing river.  His head sank on his breast.  His lips
+murmured in prayer:
+
+"But be merciful to me, Thou just Judge of Israel, for Thou hast made me,
+and Thou knowest whereof I am made.  Here will I dedicate my life to Thee
+for the land's sake.  Not for my soul's sake, O my God!  If it be Thy
+will, let my soul be cast away; but for the soul of him whose body I
+slew, and for his land, let my life be the long sacrifice."
+
+Dreams he had had the night before--terrible dreams, which he could never
+forget; dreams of a fugitive being hunted through the world, escaping and
+eluding, only to be hemmed in once more; on and on till he grew grey and
+gaunt, and the hunt suddenly ended in a great morass, into which he
+plunged with the howling world behind him.  The grey, dank mists came
+down on him, his footsteps sank deeper and deeper, and ever the cries, as
+of damned spirits, grew in his ears.  Mocking shapes flitted past him,
+the wings of obscene birds buffeted him, the morass grew up about him;
+and now it was all a red moving mass like a dead sea heaving about him.
+With a moan of agony he felt the dolorous flood above his shoulders, and
+then a cry pierced the gloom and the loathsome misery, and a voice he
+knew called to him, "David, David, I am coming!" and he had awaked with
+the old hallucination of his uncle's voice calling to him in the dawn.
+
+It came to him now as he sat by the water-side, and he raised his face to
+the sun and to the world.  The idlers had left him alone; none were
+staring at him now.  They were all intent on their own business, each man
+labouring after his kind.  He heard the voice of a riverman as he toiled
+at a rope standing on the corn that filled his ghiassa from end to end,
+from keel to gunwale.  The man was singing a wild chant of cheerful
+labour, the soul of the hard-smitten of the earth rising above the rack
+and burden of the body:
+
+         "O, the garden where to-day we sow and to-morrow we reap!
+          O, the sakkia turning by the garden walls;
+          O, the onion-field and the date-tree growing,
+          And my hand on the plough-by the blessing of God;
+          Strength of my soul, O my brother, all's well!"
+
+The meaning of the song got into his heart.  He pressed his hand to his
+breast with a sudden gesture.  It touched something hard.  It was his
+flute.  Mechanically he had put it in his pocket when he dressed in the
+morning.  He took it out and looked at it lovingly.  Into it he had
+poured his soul in the old days--days, centuries away, it seemed now.  It
+should still be the link with the old life.  He rose and walked towards
+his home again.  The future spread clearly before him.  Rapine, murder,
+tyranny, oppression, were round him on every side, and the ruler of the
+land called him to his counsels.  Here a great duty lay--his life for
+this land, his life, and his love, and his faith.  He would expiate his
+crime and his sin, the crime of homicide for which he alone was
+responsible, the sin of secrecy for which he and another were
+responsible.  And that other?  If only there had been but one word
+of understanding between them before she left!
+
+At the door of his house stood the American whom he had met at the
+citadel yesterday-it seemed a hundred years ago.
+
+"I've got a letter for you," Lacey said.  "The lady's aunt and herself
+are cousins of mine more or less removed, and originally at home in the
+U. S. A.  a generation ago.  Her mother was an American.  She didn't know
+your name--Miss Hylda Maryon, I mean.  I told her, but there wasn't time
+to put it on."  He handed over the unaddressed envelope.
+
+David opened the letter, and read:
+
+"I have seen the papers.  I do not understand what has happened, but I
+know that all is well.  If it were not so, I would not go.  That is the
+truth.  Grateful I am, oh, believe me!  So grateful that I do not yet
+know what is the return which I must make.  But the return will be made.
+I hear of what has come to you--how easily I might have destroyed all!
+My thoughts blind me.  You are great and good; you will know at least
+that I go because it is the only thing to do.  I fly from the storm with
+a broken wing.  Take now my promise to pay what I owe in the hour Fate
+wills--or in the hour of your need.  You can trust him who brings this to
+you; he is a distant cousin of my own.  Do not judge him by his odd and
+foolish words.  They hide a good character, and he has a strong nature.
+He wants work to do.  Can you give it?  Farewell."
+
+David put the letter in his pocket, a strange quietness about his heart.
+
+He scarcely realised what Lacey was saying.  "Great girl that.  Troubled
+about something in England, I guess.  Going straight back."
+
+David thanked him for the letter.  Lacey became red in the face.  He
+tried to say something, but failed.  "Thee wishes to say something to me,
+friend?" asked David.
+
+"I'm full up; I can't speak.  But, say--"
+
+"I am going to the Palace now.  Come back at noon if you will."
+
+He wrung David's hand in gratitude.  "You're going to do it.  You're
+going to do it.  I see it.  It's a great game--like Abe Lincoln's.  Say,
+let me black your boots while you're doing it, will you?"
+
+David pressed his hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE LETTER, THE NIGHT, AND THE WOMAN
+
+     "To-day has come the fulfilment of my dream, Faith.  I am given to
+     my appointed task; I am set on a road of life in which there is no
+     looking back.  My dreams of the past are here begun in very truth
+     and fact.  When, in the night, I heard Uncle Benn calling, when in
+     the Meeting-house voices said, 'Come away, come away, and labour,
+     thou art idle,' I could hear my heart beat in the ardour to be off.
+     Yet I knew not whither.  Now I know.
+
+     "Last night the Prince Pasha called me to his Council, made me
+     adviser, confidant, as one who has the ear of his captain--after he
+     had come to terms with me upon that which Uncle Benn left of land
+     and gold.  Think not that he tempted me.
+
+     "Last night I saw favourites look upon me with hate because of
+     Kaid's favour, though the great hall was filled with show of
+     cheerful splendour, and men smiled and feasted.  To-day I know that
+     in the Palace where I was summoned to my first: duty with the
+     Prince, every step I took was shadowed, every motion recorded, every
+     look or word noted and set down.  I have no fear of them.  They are
+     not subtle enough for the unexpected acts of honesty in the life of
+     a true man.  Yet I do not wonder men fail to keep honest in the
+     midst of this splendour, where all is strife as to who shall have
+     the Prince's favour; who shall enjoy the fruits of bribery,
+     backsheesh, and monopoly; who shall wring from the slave and the
+     toil-ridden fellah the coin his poor body mints at the corvee, in
+     his own taxed fields of dourha and cucumbers.
+
+     "Is this like anything we ever dreamed at Hamley, Faith?  Yet here
+     am I set, and here shall I stay till the skein be ravelled out.
+     Soon I shall go into the desert upon a mission to the cities of the
+     South, to Dongola, Khartoum, and Darfur and beyond; for there is
+     trouble yonder, and war is near, unless it is given to me to bring
+     peace.  So I must bend to my study of Arabic, which I am thankful I
+     learned long ago.  And I must not forget to say that I shall take
+     with me on my journey that faithful Muslim Ebn Ezra.  Others I shall
+     take also, but of them I shall write hereafter.
+
+     "I shall henceforth be moving in the midst of things which I was
+     taught to hate.  I pray that I may not hate them less as time goes
+     on.  To-morrow I shall breathe the air of intrigue, shall hear
+     footsteps of spies behind me wherever I go; shall know that even the
+     roses in the garden have ears; that the ground under my feet will
+     telegraph my thoughts.  Shall I be true?  Shall I at last whisper,
+     and follow, and evade, believe in no one, much less in myself, steal
+     in and out of men's confidences to use them for my own purposes?
+     Does any human being know what he can bear of temptation or of the
+     daily pressure of the life around him?  what powers of resistance
+     are in his soul?  how long the vital energy will continue to throw
+     off the never-ending seduction, the freshening force of evil?
+     Therein lies the power of evil, that it is ever new, ever fortified
+     by continuous conquest and achievements.  It has the rare fire of
+     aggression; is ever more upon the offence than upon the defence;
+     has, withal, the false lure of freedom from restraint, the throbbing
+     force of sympathy.
+
+     "Such things I dreamed not of in Soolsby's but upon the hill, Faith,
+     though, indeed, that seemed a time of trial and sore-heartedness.
+     How large do small issues seem till we have faced the momentous
+     things!  It is true that the larger life has pleasures and expanding
+     capacities; but it is truer still that it has perils, events which
+     try the soul as it is never tried in the smaller life--unless,
+     indeed, the soul be that of the Epicurean.  The Epicurean I well
+     understand, and in his way I might have walked with a wicked grace.
+     I have in me some hidden depths of luxury, a secret heart of
+     pleasure, an understanding for the forbidden thing.  I could have
+     walked the broad way with a laughing heart, though, in truth, habit
+     of mind and desire have kept me in the better path.  But offences
+     must come, and woe to him from whom the offence cometh!  I have
+     begun now, and only now, to feel the storms that shake us to our
+     farthest cells of life.  I begin to see how near good is to evil;
+     how near faith is to unfaith; and how difficult it is to judge from
+     actions only; how little we can know to-day what we shall feel
+     tomorrow.  Yet one must learn to see deeper, to find motive, not in
+     acts that shake the faith, but in character which needs no
+     explanation, which--"
+
+He paused, disturbed.  Then he raised his head, as though not conscious
+of what was breaking the course of his thoughts.  Presently he realised a
+low, hurried knocking at his door.  He threw a hand over his eyes, and
+sprang up.  An instant later the figure of a woman, deeply veiled, stood
+within the room, beside the table where he had been writing.  There was
+silence as they faced each other, his back against the door.
+
+"Oh, do you not know me?" she said at last, and sank into the chair
+where he had been sitting.
+
+The question was unnecessary, and she knew it was so; but she could not
+bear the strain of the silence.  She seemed to have risen out of the
+letter he had been writing; and had he not been writing of her--of what
+concerned them both?  How mean and small-hearted he had been, to have
+thought for an instant that she had not the highest courage, though in
+going she had done the discreeter, safer thing.  But she had come--she
+had come!
+
+All this was in his eyes, though his face was pale and still.  He was
+almost rigid with emotion, for the ancient habit of repose and self-
+command of the Quaker people was upon him.
+
+"Can you not see--do you not know?" she repeated, her back upon him now,
+her face still veiled, her hands making a swift motion of distress.
+
+"Has thee found in the past that thee is so soon forgotten?"
+
+"Oh, do not blame me!"  She raised her veil suddenly, and showed a face
+as pale as his own, and in the eyes a fiery brightness.  "I did not know.
+It was so hard to come--do not blame me.  I went to Alexandria--I felt
+that I must fly; the air around me seemed full of voices crying out.  Did
+you not understand why I went?"
+
+"I understand," he said, coming forward slowly.  "Thee should not have
+returned.  In the way I go now the watchers go also."
+
+"If I had not come, you would never have understood," she answered
+quickly.  "I am not sorry I went.  I was so frightened, so shaken.  My
+only thought was to get away from the terrible Thing.  But I should have
+been sorry all my life long had I not come back to tell you what I feel,
+and that I shall never forget.  All my life I shall be grateful.  You
+have saved me from a thousand deaths.  Ah, if I could give you but one
+life!  Yet--yet--oh, do not think but that I would tell you the whole
+truth, though I am not wholly truthful.  See, I love my place in the
+world more than I love my life; and but for you I should have lost all."
+
+He made a protesting motion.  "The debt is mine, in truth.  But for you I
+should never have known what, perhaps--" He paused.
+
+His eyes were on hers, gravely speaking what his tongue faltered to say.
+She looked and looked, but did not understand.  She only saw troubled
+depths, lighted by a soul of kindling purpose.  "Tell me," she said,
+awed.
+
+"Through you I have come to know--"  He paused again.  What he was going
+to say, truthful though it was, must hurt her, and she had been sorely
+hurt already.  He put his thoughts more gently, more vaguely.
+
+"By what happened I have come to see what matters in life.  I was behind
+the hedge.  I have broken through upon the road.  I know my goal now.
+The highway is before me."
+
+She felt the tragedy in his words, and her voice shook as she spoke.  "I
+wish I knew life better.  Then I could make a better answer.  You are on
+the road, you say.  But I feel that it is a hard and cruel road--oh, I
+understand that at least!  Tell me, please, tell me the whole truth.  You
+are hiding from me what you feel.  I have upset your life, have I not?
+You are a Quaker, and Quakers are better than all other Christian people,
+are they not?  Their faith is peace, and for me, you--" She covered her
+face with her hands for an instant, but turned quickly and looked him in
+the eyes: "For me you put your hand upon the clock of a man's life, and
+stopped it."
+
+She got to her feet with a passionate gesture, but he put a hand gently
+upon her arm, and she sank back again.  "Oh, it was not you; it was I who
+did it!" she said.  "You did what any man of honour would have done,
+what a brother would have done."
+
+"What I did is a matter for myself only," he responded quickly.  "Had I
+never seen your face again it would have been the same.  You were the
+occasion; the thing I did had only one source, my own heart and mind.
+There might have been another way; but for that way, or for the way I did
+take, you could not be responsible."
+
+"How generous you are!"  Her eyes swam with tears; she leaned over the
+table where he had been writing, and the tears dropped upon his letter.
+Presently she realised this, and drew back, then made as though to dry
+the tears from the paper with her handkerchief.  As she did so the words
+that he had written met her eye: "'But offences must come, and woe to him
+from whom the offence cometh!'  I have begun now, and only now, to feel
+the storms that shake us to our farthest cells of life."
+
+She became very still.  He touched her arm and said heavily: "Come away,
+come away."
+
+She pointed to the words she had read.  "I could not help but see, and
+now I know what this must mean to you."
+
+"Thee must go at once," he urged.  "Thee should not have come.  Thee was
+safe--none knew.  A few hours and it would all have been far behind.  We
+might never have met again."
+
+Suddenly she gave a low, hysterical laugh.  "You think you hide the real
+thing from me.  I know I'm ignorant and selfish and feeble-minded, but I
+can see farther than you think.  You want to tell the truth about--about
+it, because you are honest and hate hiding things, because you want to be
+punished, and so pay the price.  Oh, I can understand!  If it were not
+for me you would not.  .  .  .  "  With a sudden wild impulse she got to
+her feet.  "And you shall not," she cried.  "I will not have it."  Colour
+came rushing to her cheeks.
+
+"I will not have it.  I will not put myself so much in your debt.  I will
+not demand so much of you.  I will face it all.  I will stand alone."
+
+There was a touch of indignation in her voice.  Somehow she seemed moved
+to anger against him.  Her hands were clasped at her side rigidly, her
+pulses throbbing.  He stood looking at her fixedly, as though trying to
+realise her.  His silence agitated her still further, and she spoke
+excitedly:
+
+"I could have, would have, killed him myself without a moment's regret.
+He had planned, planned--ah, God, can you not see it all!  I would have
+taken his life without a thought.  I was mad to go upon such an
+adventure, but I meant no ill.  I had not one thought that I could not
+have cried out from the housetops, and he had in his heart--he had what
+you saw.  But you repent that you killed him--by accident, it was by
+accident.  Do you realise how many times others have been trapped by him
+as was I?  Do you not see what he was--as I see now?  Did he not say as
+much to me before you came, when I was dumb with terror?  Did he not make
+me understand what his whole life had been?  Did I not see in a flash the
+women whose lives he had spoiled and killed?  Would I have had pity?
+Would I have had remorse?  No, no, no!  I was frightened when it was
+done, I was horrified, but I was not sorry; and I am not sorry.  It was
+to be.  It was thetrue end to his vileness.  Ah!"
+
+She shuddered, and buried her face in her hands for a moment, then went
+on: "I can never forgive myself for going to the Palace with him.  I was
+mad for experience, for mystery; I wanted more than the ordinary share of
+knowledge.  I wanted to probe things.  Yet I meant no wrong.  I thought
+then nothing of which I shall ever be ashamed.  But I shall always be
+ashamed because I knew him, because he thought that I--oh, if I were a
+man, I should be glad that I had killed him, for the sake of all honest
+women!"
+
+He remained silent.  His look was not upon her, he seemed lost in a
+dream; but his face was fixed in trouble.
+
+She misunderstood his silence.  "You had the courage, the impulse to--to
+do it," she said keenly; "you have not the courage to justify it.  I will
+not have it so.
+
+"I will tell the truth to all the world.  I will not shrink I shrank
+yesterday because I was afraid of the world; to-day I will face it, I
+will--"
+
+She stopped suddenly, and another look flashed into her face.  Presently
+she spoke in a different tone; a new light had come upon her mind.  "But
+I see," she added.  "To tell all is to make you the victim, too, of what
+he did.  It is in your hands; it is all in your hands; and I cannot speak
+unless--unless you are ready also."
+
+There was an unintended touch of scorn in her voice.  She had been
+troubled and tried beyond bearing, and her impulsive nature revolted at
+his silence.  She misunderstood him, or, if she did not wholly
+misunderstand him, she was angry at what she thought was a needless
+remorse or sensitiveness.  Did not the man deserve his end?
+
+"There is only one course to pursue," he rejoined quietly, "and that is
+the course we entered upon last night.  I neither doubted yourself nor
+your courage.  Thee must not turn back now.  Thee must not alter the
+course which was your own making, and the only course which thee could,
+or I should, take.  I have planned my life according to the word I gave
+you.  I could not turn back now.  We are strangers, and we must remain
+so.  Thee will go from here now, and we must not meet again.  I am--"
+
+"I know who you are," she broke in.  "I know what your religion is; that
+fighting and war and bloodshed is a sin to you."
+
+"I am of no family or place in England," he went on calmly.  "I come of
+yeoman and trading stock; I have nothing in common with people of rank.
+Our lines of life will not cross.  It is well that it should be so.  As
+to what happened--that which I may feel has nothing to do with whether I
+was justified or no.  But if thee has thought that I have repented doing
+what I did, let that pass for ever from your mind.  I know that I should
+do the same, yes, even a hundred times.  I did according to my nature.
+Thee must not now be punished cruelly for a thing thee did not do.
+Silence is the only way of safety or of justice.  We must not speak of
+this again.  We must each go our own way."
+
+Her eyes were moist.  She reached out a hand to him timidly.  "Oh,
+forgive me," she added brokenly, "I am so vain, so selfish, and that
+makes one blind to the truth.  It is all clearer now.  You have shown me
+that I was right in my first impulse, and that is all I can say for
+myself.  I shall pray all my life that it will do you no harm in the
+end."
+
+She remained silent, for a moment adjusting her veil, preparing to go.
+Presently she spoke again: "I shall always want to know about you--what
+is happening to you.  How could it be otherwise?"
+
+She was half realising one of the deepest things in existence, that the
+closest bond between two human beings is a bond of secrecy upon a thing
+which vitally, fatally concerns both or either.  It is a power at once
+malevolent and beautiful.  A secret like that of David and Hylda will do
+in a day what a score of years could not accomplish, will insinuate
+confidences which might never be given to the nearest or dearest.  In
+neither was any feeling of the heart begotten by their experiences; and
+yet they had gone deeper in each other's lives than any one either had
+known in a lifetime.  They had struck a deeper note than love or
+friendship.  They had touched the chord of a secret and mutual experience
+which had gone so far that their lives would be influenced by it for ever
+after.  Each understood this in a different way.
+
+Hylda looked towards the letter lying on the table.  It had raised in her
+mind, not a doubt, but an undefined, undefinable anxiety.  He saw the
+glance, and said: "I was writing to one who has been as a sister to me.
+She was my mother's sister though she is almost as young as I.  Her name
+is Faith.  There is nothing there of what concerns thee and me, though it
+would make no difference if she knew."  Suddenly a thought seemed to
+strike him.  "The secret is of thee and me.  There is safety.  If it
+became another's, there might be peril.  The thing shall be between us
+only, for ever?"
+
+"Do you think that I--"
+
+"My instinct tells me a woman of sensitive mind might one day, out of an
+unmerciful honesty, tell her husband--"
+
+"I am not married-"
+
+"But one day--"
+
+She interrupted him.  "Sentimental egotism will not rule me.  Tell me,"
+she added, "tell me one thing before I go.  You said that your course was
+set.  What is it?"
+
+"I remain here," he answered quietly.  "I remain in the service of Prince
+Kaid."
+
+"It is a dreadful government, an awful service--" "That is why I stay."
+
+"You are going to try and change things here--you alone?"
+
+"I hope not alone, in time."
+
+"You are going to leave England, your friends, your family, your place--
+in Hamley, was it not?  My aunt has read of you--my cousin--" she paused.
+
+"I had no place in Hamley.  Here is my place.  Distance has little to do
+with understanding or affection.  I had an uncle here in the East for
+twenty-five years, yet I knew him better than all others in the world.
+Space is nothing if minds are in sympathy.  My uncle talked to me over
+seas and lands.  I felt him, heard him speak."
+
+"You think that minds can speak to minds, no matter what the distance--
+real and definite things?"
+
+"If I were parted from one very dear to me, I would try to say to him or
+her what was in my mind, not by written word only, but by the flying
+thought."
+
+She sat down suddenly, as though overwhelmed.  "Oh, if that were
+possible!" she said.  "If only one could send a thought like that!"
+Then with an impulse, and the flicker of a sad smile, she reached out a
+hand.  "If ever in the years to come you want to speak to me, will you
+try to make me understand, as your uncle did with you?"
+
+"I cannot tell," he answered.  "That which is deepest within us obeys
+only the laws of its need.  By instinct it turns to where help lies,
+as a wild deer, fleeing, from captivity, makes for the veldt and the
+watercourse."
+
+She got to her feet again.  "I want to pay my debt," she said solemnly.
+"It is a debt that one day must be paid--so awful--so awful!"  A swift
+change passed over her.  She shuddered, and grew white.  "I said brave
+words just now," she added in a hoarse whisper, "but now I see him lying
+there cold and still, and you stooping over him.  I see you touch his
+breast, his pulse.  I see you close his eyes.  One instant full of the
+pulse of life, the next struck out into infinite space.  Oh, I shall
+never--how can I ever-forget!"  She turned her head away from him, then
+composed herself again, and said quietly, with anxious eyes: "Why was
+nothing said or done?  Perhaps they are only waiting.  Perhaps they know.
+Why was it announced that he died in his bed at home?"
+
+"I cannot tell.  When a man in high places dies in Egypt, it may be one
+death or another.  No one inquires too closely.  He died in Kaid Pasha's
+Palace, where other men have died, and none has inquired too closely.
+To-day they told me at the Palace that his carriage was seen to leave
+with himself and Mizraim the Chief Eunuch.  Whatever the object, he was
+secretly taken to his house from the Palace, and his brother Nahoum
+seized upon his estate in the early morning.
+
+"I think that no one knows the truth.  But it is all in the hands of God.
+We can do nothing more.  Thee must go.  Thee should not have come.  In
+England thee will forget, as thee should forget.  In Egypt I shall
+remember, as I should remember."
+
+"Thee," she repeated softly.  "I love the Quaker thee.  My grandmother
+was an American Quaker.  She always spoke like that.  Will you not use
+thee and thou in speaking to me, always?"
+
+"We are not likely to speak together in any language in the future," he
+answered.  "But now thee must go, and I will--"
+
+"My cousin, Mr. Lacey, is waiting for me in the garden," she answered.
+"I shall be safe with him."  She moved towards the door.  He caught the
+handle to turn it, when there came the noise of loud talking, and the
+sound of footsteps in the court-yard.  He opened the door slightly and
+looked out, then closed it quickly.  "It is Nahoum Pasha," he said.
+"Please, the other room," he added, and pointed to a curtain.  "There is
+a window leading on a garden.  The garden-gate opens on a street leading
+to the Ezbekiah Square and your hotel."
+
+"But, no, I shall stay here," she said.  She drew down her veil, then
+taking from her pocket another, arranged it also, so that her face was
+hidden.
+
+"Thee must go," he said--"go quickly."  Again he pointed.
+
+"I will remain," she rejoined, with determination, and seated herself in
+a chair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE FOUR WHO KNEW
+
+There was a knocking at the door.  David opened it.  Nahoum Pasha stepped
+inside, and stood still a moment looking at Hylda.  Then he made low
+salutation to her, touched his hand to his lips and breast saluting
+David, and waited.
+
+"What is thy business, pasha?" asked David quietly, and motioned towards
+a chair.
+
+"May thy path be on the high hills, Saadat-el-basha.  I come for a favour
+at thy hands."  Nahoum sat down.  "What favour is mine to give to Nahoum
+Pasha?"
+
+"The Prince has given thee supreme place--it was mine but yesterday.  It
+is well.  To the deserving be the fruits of deserving."
+
+"Is merit, then, so truly rewarded here?" asked David quietly.
+
+"The Prince saw merit at last when he chose your Excellency for
+councillor."
+
+"How shall I show merit, then, in the eyes of Nahoum Pasha?"
+
+"Even by urging the Prince to give me place under him again.  Not as
+heretofore--that is thy place--yet where it may be.  I have capacity.
+I can aid thee in the great task.  Thou wouldst remake our Egypt--and my
+heart is with you.  I would rescue, not destroy.  In years gone by I
+tried to do good to this land, and I failed.  I was alone.  I had not the
+strength to fight the forces around me.  I was overcome.  I had too
+little faith.  But my heart was with the right--I am an Armenian and a
+Christian of the ancient faith.  I am in sorrow.  Death has humbled me.
+My brother Foorgat Bey--may flowers bloom for ever on his grave!--he is
+dead,"--his eyes were fixed on those of David, as with a perfectly
+assured candour--"and my heart is like an empty house.  But man must not
+be idle and live--if Kaid lets me live.  I have riches.  Are not
+Foorgat's riches mine, his Palace, his gardens, his cattle, and his
+plantations, are they not mine?  I may sit in the court-yard and hear the
+singers, may listen to the tale-tellers by the light of the moon; I may
+hear the tales of Al-Raschid chanted by one whose tongue never falters,
+and whose voice is like music; after the manner of the East I may give
+bread and meat to the poor at sunset; I may call the dancers to the
+feast.  But what comfort shall it give?  I am no longer a youth.  I would
+work.  I would labour for the land of Egypt, for by work shall we fulfil
+ourselves, redeem ourselves.  Saadat, I would labour, but my master has
+taken away from me the anvil, the fire, and the hammer, and I sit without
+the door like an armless beggar.  What work to do in Egypt save to help
+the land, and how shall one help, save in the Prince's service?  There
+can be no reform from outside.  If I laboured for better things outside
+Kaid's Palace, how long dost thou think I should escape the Nile, or the
+diamond-dust in my coffee?  The work which I did, is it not so that it,
+with much more, falls now to thy hands, Saadat, with a confidence from
+Kaid that never was mine?"
+
+"I sought not the office."
+
+"Have I a word of blame?  I come to ask for work to do with thee.  Do I
+not know Prince Kaid?  He had come to distrust us all.  As stale water
+were we in his taste.  He had no pleasure in us, and in our deeds he
+found only stones of stumbling.  He knew not whom to trust.  One by one
+we all had yielded to ceaseless intrigue and common distrust of each
+other, until no honest man was left; till all were intent to save their
+lives by holding power; for in this land to lose power is to lose life.
+No man who has been in high place, has had the secrets of the Palace and
+the ear of the Prince, lives after he has lost favour.  The Prince, for
+his safety, must ensure silence, and the only silence in Egypt is the
+grave.  In thee, Saadat, Kaid has found an honest man.  Men will call
+thee mad, if thou remainest honest, but that is within thine own bosom
+and with fate.  For me, thou hast taken my place, and more.  Malaish, it
+is the decree of fate, and I have no anger.  I come to ask thee to save
+my life, and then to give me work."
+
+"How shall I save thy life?"
+
+"By reconciling the Effendina to my living, and then by giving me
+service, where I shall be near to thee; where I can share with thee,
+though it be as the ant beside the beaver, the work of salvation in
+Egypt.  I am rich since my brother was--"  He paused; no covert look was
+in his eyes, no sign of knowledge, nothing but meditation and sorrowful
+frankness--"since Foorgat passed away in peace, praise be to God!  He lay
+on his bed in the morning, when one came to wake him, like a sleeping
+child, no sign of the struggle of death upon him."
+
+A gasping sound came from the chair where Hylda sat; but he took no
+notice.  He appeared to be unconscious of David's pain-drawn face, as he
+sat with hands upon his knees, his head bent forward listening, as though
+lost to the world.
+
+"So did Foorgat, my brother, die while yet in the fulness of his manhood,
+life beating high in his veins, with years before him to waste.  He was a
+pleasure-lover, alas! he laid up no treasure of work accomplished; and so
+it was meet that he should die as he lived, in a moment of ease.  And
+already he is forgotten.  It is the custom here.  He might have died by
+diamond-dust, and men would have set down their coffee-cups in surprise,
+and then would have forgotten; or he might have been struck down by the
+hand of an assassin, and, unless it was in the Palace, none would have
+paused to note it.  And so the sands sweep over his steps upon the shore
+of time."
+
+After the first exclamation of horror, Hylda had sat rigid, listening
+as though under a spell.  Through her veil she gazed at Nahoum with a
+cramping pain at her heart, for he seemed ever on the verge of the truth
+she dreaded; and when he spoke the truth, as though unconsciously, she
+felt she must cry out and rush from the room.  He recalled to her the
+scene in the little tapestried room as vividly as though it was there
+before her eyes, and it had for the moment all the effect of a hideous
+nightmare.  At last, however, she met David's eyes, and they guided her,
+for in them was a steady strength and force which gave her confidence.
+At first he also had been overcome inwardly, but his nerves were cool,
+his head was clear, and he listened to Nahoum, thinking out his course
+meanwhile.
+
+He owed this man much.  He had taken his place, and by so doing had
+placed his life in danger.  He had killed the brother upon the same day
+that he had dispossessed the favourite of office; and the debt was heavy.
+In office Nahoum had done after his kind, after the custom of the place
+and the people; and yet, as it would seem, the man had had stirrings
+within him towards a higher path.  He, at any rate, had not amassed
+riches out of his position, and so much could not be said of any other
+servant of the Prince Pasha.  Much he had heard of Nahoum's powerful
+will, hidden under a genial exterior, and behind his friendly, smiling
+blue eyes.  He had heard also of cruelty--of banishment, and of enemies
+removed from his path suddenly, never to be seen again; but, on the
+whole, men spoke with more admiration of him than of any other public
+servant, Armenian Christian in a Mahommedan country though he was.  That
+very day Kaid had said that if Nahoum had been less eager to control the
+State, he might still have held his place.  Besides, the man was a
+Christian--of a mystic, half-legendary, obscure Christianity; yet having
+in his mind the old faith, its essence and its meaning, perhaps.  Might
+not this Oriental mind, with that faith, be a power to redeem the land?
+It was a wonderful dream, in which he found the way, as he thought, to
+atone somewhat to this man for a dark injury done.
+
+When Nahoum stopped speaking David said: "But if I would have it, if it
+were well that it should be, I doubt I have the power to make it so."
+
+"Saadat-el-bdsha, Kaid believes in thee to-day; he will not believe
+to-morrow if thou dost remain without initiative.  Action, however
+startling, will be proof of fitness.  His Highness shakes a long spear.
+Those who ride with him must do battle with the same valour.  Excellency,
+I have now great riches--since Death smote Foorgat Bey in the forehead"
+--still his eyes conveyed no meaning, though Hylda shrank back--"and I
+would use them for the good thou wouldst do here.  Money will be needed,
+and sufficient will not be at thy hand-not till new ledgers be opened,
+new balances struck."
+
+He turned to Hylda quietly, and with a continued air of innocence said:
+"Shall it not be so-madame?  Thou, I doubt not, are of his kin.  It would
+seem so, though I ask pardon if it be not so--wilt thou not urge his
+Excellency to restore me to Kaid's favour?  I know little of the English,
+though I know them humane and honest; but my brother, Foorgat Bey, he
+was much among them, lived much in England, was a friend to many great
+English.  Indeed, on the evening that he died I saw him in the gallery of
+the banquet-room with an English lady--can one be mistaken in an English
+face?  Perhaps he cared for her; perhaps that was why he smiled as he lay
+upon his bed, never to move again.  Madame, perhaps in England thou mayst
+have known my brother.  If that is so, I ask thee to speak for me to his
+Excellency.  My life is in danger, and I am too young to go as my brother
+went.  I do not wish to die in middle age, as my brother died."
+
+He had gone too far.  In David's mind there was no suspicion that Nahoum
+knew the truth.  The suggestion in his words had seemed natural; but,
+from the first, a sharp suspicion was in the mind of Hylda, and his last
+words had convinced her that if Nahoum did not surely know the truth, he
+suspected it all too well.  Her instinct had pierced far; and as she
+realised his suspicions, perhaps his certainty, and heard his words of
+covert insult, which, as she saw, David did not appreciate, anger and
+determination grew in her.  Yet she felt that caution must mark her
+words, and that nothing but danger lay in resentment.  She felt the
+everlasting indignity behind the quiet, youthful eyes, the determined
+power of the man; but she saw also that, for the present, the course
+Nahoum suggested was the only course to take.  And David must not even
+feel the suspicion in her own mind, that Nahoum knew or suspected the
+truth.  If David thought that Nahoum knew, the end of all would come at
+once.  It was clear, however, that Nahoum meant to be silent, or he would
+have taken another course of action.  Danger lay in every direction, but,
+to her mind, the least danger lay in following Nahoum's wish.
+
+She slowly raised her veil, showing a face very still now, with eyes as
+steady as David's.  David started at her action, he thought it rash; but
+the courage of it pleased him, too.
+
+"You are not mistaken," she said slowly in French; "your brother was
+known to me.  I had met him in England.  It will be a relief to all his
+friends to know that he passed away peacefully."  She looked him in the
+eyes determinedly.  "Monsieur Claridge is not my kinsman, but he is my
+fellow-countryman.  If you mean well by monsieur, your knowledge and your
+riches should help him on his way.  But your past is no guarantee of good
+faith, as you will acknowledge."
+
+He looked her in the eyes with a far meaning.  "But I am giving
+guarantees of good faith now," he said softly.  "Will you--not?"
+
+She understood.  It was clear that he meant peace, for the moment at
+least.
+
+"If I had influence I would advise him to reconcile you to Prince Kaid,"
+she said quietly, then turned to David with an appeal in her eyes.
+
+David stood up.  "I will do what I can," he said.  "If thee means as well
+by Egypt as I mean by thee, all may be well for all."
+
+"Saadat!  Saadat!" said Nahoum, with show of assumed feeling, and made
+salutation.  Then to Hylda, making lower salutation still, he said: "Thou
+hast lifted from my neck the yoke.  Thou hast saved me from the shadow
+and the dust.  I am thy slave."  His eyes were like a child's, wide and
+confiding.
+
+He turned towards the door, and was about to open it, when there came a
+knocking, and he stepped back.  Hylda drew down her veil.  David opened
+the door cautiously and admitted Mizraim the Chief Eunuch.  Mizraim's
+eyes searched the room, and found Nahoum.
+
+"Pasha," he said to Nahoum, "may thy bones never return to dust, nor the
+light of thine eyes darken!  There is danger."
+
+Nahoum nodded, but did not speak.
+
+"Shall I speak, then?"  He paused and made low salutation to David,
+saying, "Excellency, I am thine ox to be slain."
+
+"Speak, son of the flowering oak," said Nahoum, with a sneer in his
+voice.  "What blessing dost thou bring?"
+
+"The Effendina has sent for thee."
+
+Nahoum's eyes flashed.  "By thee, lion of Abdin?"  The lean, ghastly
+being smiled.  "He has sent a company of soldiers and Achmet Pasha."
+
+"Achmet!  Is it so?  They are here, Mizraim, watcher of the morning?"
+
+"They are at thy palace--I am here, light of Egypt."
+
+"How knewest thou I was here?"
+
+Mizraim salaamed.  "A watch was set upon thee this morning early.  The
+watcher was of my slaves.  He brought the word to me that thou wast here
+now.  A watcher also was set upon thee, Excellency"--he turned to David.
+"He also was of my slaves.  Word was delivered to his Highness that thou"
+--he turned to Nahoum again--"wast in thy palace, and Achmet Pasha
+went thither.  He found thee not.  Now the city is full of watchers, and
+Achmet goes from bazaar to bazaar, from house to house which thou was
+wont to frequent--and thou art here."
+
+"What wouldst thou have me do, Mizraim?"
+
+"Thou art here; is it the house of a friend or a foe?"  Nahoum did not
+answer.  His eyes were fixed in thought upon the floor, but he was
+smiling.  He seemed without fear.
+
+"But if this be the house of a friend, is he safe here?" asked David.
+
+"For this night, it may be," answered Mizraim, "till other watchers be
+set, who are no slaves of mine.  Tonight, here, of all places in Cairo,
+he is safe; for who could look to find him where thou art who hast taken
+from him his place and office, Excellency--on whom the stars shine for
+ever!  But in another day, if my lord Nahoum be not forgiven by the
+Effendina, a hundred watchers will pierce the darkest corner of the
+bazaar, the smallest room in Cairo."
+
+David turned to Nahoum.  "Peace be to thee, friend.  Abide here till
+to-morrow, when I will speak for thee to his Highness, and, I trust,
+bring thee pardon.  It shall be so--but I shall prevail," he added, with
+slow decision; "I shall prevail with him.  My reasons shall convince his
+Highness."
+
+"I can help thee with great reasons, Saadat," said Nahoum.  "Thou shalt
+prevail.  I can tell thee that which will convince Kaid."
+
+While they were speaking, Hylda had sat motionless watching.  At first
+it seemed to her that a trap had been set, and that David was to be the
+victim of Oriental duplicity; but revolt, as she did, from the miserable
+creature before them, she saw at last that he spoke the truth.
+
+"Thee will remain under this roof to-night, pasha?" asked David.
+
+"I will stay if thy goodness will have it so," answered Nahoum slowly.
+"It is not my way to hide, but when the storm comes it is well to
+shelter."
+
+Salaaming low, Mizraim withdrew, his last glance being thrown towards
+Hylda, who met his look with a repugnance which made her face rigid.  She
+rose and put on her gloves.  Nahoum rose also, and stood watching her
+respectfully.
+
+"Thee will go?" asked David, with a movement towards her.
+
+She inclined her head.  "We have finished our business, and it is late,"
+she answered.
+
+David looked at Nahoum.  "Thee will rest here, pasha, in peace.  In a
+moment I will return."  He took up his hat.
+
+There was a sudden flash of Nahoum's eyes, as though he saw an outcome of
+the intention which pleased him, but Hylda, saw the flash, and her senses
+were at once alarmed.
+
+"There is no need to accompany me," she said.  "My cousin waits for me."
+
+David opened the door leading into the court-yard.  It was dark, save for
+the light of a brazier of coals.  A short distance away, near the outer
+gate, glowed a star of red light, and the fragrance of a strong cigar
+came over.
+
+"Say, looking for me?" said a voice, and a figure moved towards David.
+"Yours to command, pasha, yours to command."  Lacey from Chicago held out
+his hand.
+
+"Thee is welcome, friend," said David.
+
+"She's ready, I suppose.  Wonderful person, that.  Stands on her own feet
+every time.  She don't seem as though she came of the same stock as me,
+does she?"
+
+"I will bring her if thee will wait, friend."
+
+"I'm waiting."  Lacey drew back to the gateway again and leaned against
+the wall, his cigar blazing in the dusk.
+
+A moment later David appeared in the garden again, with the slim,
+graceful figure of the girl who stood "upon her own feet."  David drew
+her aside for a moment.  "Thee is going at once to England?" he asked.
+
+"To-morrow to Alexandria.  There is a steamer next day for Marseilles.
+In a fortnight more I shall be in England."
+
+"Thee must forget Egypt," he said.  "Remembrance is not a thing of the
+will," she answered.
+
+"It is thy duty to forget.  Thee is young, and it is spring with thee.
+Spring should be in thy heart.  Thee has seen a shadow; but let it not
+fright thee."
+
+"My only fear is that I may forget," she answered.
+
+"Yet thee will forget."
+
+With a motion towards Lacey he moved to the gate.  Suddenly she turned to
+him and touched his arm.  "You will be a great man herein Egypt," she
+said.  "You will have enemies without number.  The worst of your enemies
+always will be your guest to-night."
+
+He did not, for a moment, understand.  "Nahoum?" he asked.  "I take his
+place.  It would not be strange; but I will win him to me."
+
+"You will never win him," she answered.  "Oh, trust my instinct in this!
+Watch him.  Beware of him."  David smiled slightly.  "I shall have need
+to beware of many.  I am sure thee does well to caution me.  Farewell,"
+he added.
+
+"If it should be that I can ever help you--" she said, and paused.
+
+"Thee has helped me," he replied.  "The world is a desert.  Caravans from
+all quarters of the sun meet at the cross-roads.  One gives the other
+food or drink or medicine, and they move on again.  And all grows dim
+with time.  And the camel-drivers are forgotten; but the cross-roads
+remain, and the food and the drink and the medicine and the cattle helped
+each caravan upon the way.  Is it not enough?"
+
+She placed her hand in his.  It lay there for a moment.  "God be with
+thee, friend," he said.
+
+The next instant Thomas Tilman Lacey's drawling voice broke the silence.
+
+"There's something catching about these nights in Egypt.  I suppose it's
+the air.  No wind--just the stars, and the ultramarine, and the nothing
+to do but lay me down and sleep.  It doesn't give you the jim-jumps like
+Mexico.  It makes you forget the world, doesn't it?  You'd do things here
+that you wouldn't do anywhere else."
+
+The gate was opened by the bowab, and the two passed through.  David was
+standing by the brazier, his hand held unconsciously over the coals, his
+eyes turned towards them.  The reddish flame from the fire lit up his
+face under the broad-brimmed hat.  His head, slightly bowed, was thrust
+forward to the dusk.  Hylda looked at him steadily for a moment.  Their
+eyes met, though hers were in the shade.  Again Lacey spoke.  "Don't be
+anxious.  I'll see her safe back.  Good-bye.  Give my love to the girls."
+
+David stood looking at the closed gate with eyes full of thought and
+wonder and trouble.  He was not thinking of the girl.  There was no
+sentimental reverie in his look.  Already his mind was engaged in
+scrutiny of the circumstances in which he was set.  He realised fully his
+situation.  The idealism which had been born with him had met its reward
+in a labour herculean at the least, and the infinite drudgery of the
+practical issues came in a terrible pressure of conviction to his mind.
+The mind did not shrink from any thought of the dangers in which he would
+be placed, from any vision of the struggle he must have with intrigue,
+and treachery and vileness.  In a dim, half-realised way he felt that
+honesty and truth would be invincible weapons with a people who did not
+know them.  They would be embarrassed, if not baffled, by a formula of
+life and conduct which they could not understand.
+
+It was not these matters that vexed him now, but the underlying forces of
+life set in motion by the blow which killed a fellow-man.  This fact had
+driven him to an act of redemption unparalleled in its intensity and
+scope; but he could not tell--and this was the thought that shook his
+being--how far this act itself, inspiring him to a dangerous and immense
+work in life, would sap the best that was in him, since it must remain a
+secret crime, for which he could not openly atone.  He asked himself as
+he stood by the brazier, the bowab apathetically rolling cigarettes at
+his feet, whether, in the flow of circumstance, the fact that he could
+not make open restitution, or take punishment for his unlawful act, would
+undermine the structure of his character.  He was on the threshold of his
+career: action had not yet begun; he was standing like a swimmer on a
+high shore, looking into depths beneath which have never been plumbed by
+mortal man, wondering what currents, what rocks, lay beneath the surface
+of the blue.  Would his strength, his knowledge, his skill, be equal to
+the enterprise?  Would he emerge safe and successful, or be carried away
+by some strong undercurrent, be battered on unseen rocks?
+
+He turned with a calm face to the door behind which sat the displaced
+favourite of the Prince, his mind at rest, the trouble gone out of his
+eyes.
+
+"Uncle Benn!  Uncle Benn!" he said to himself, with a warmth at his
+heart as he opened the door and stepped inside.
+
+Nahoum sat sipping coffee.  A cigarette was between his fingers.  He
+touched his hand to his forehead and his breast as David closed the door
+and hung his hat upon a nail.  David's servant, Mahommed Hassan, whom he
+had had since first he came to Egypt, was gliding from the room--a large,
+square-shouldered fellow of over six feet, dressed in a plain blue yelek,
+but on his head the green turban of one who had done a pilgrimage to
+Mecca.  Nahoum waved a hand after Mahommed and said:
+
+"Whence came thy servant sadat?"
+
+"He was my guide to Cairo.  I picked him from the street."
+
+Nahoum smiled.  There was no malice in the smile, only, as it might seem,
+a frank humour.  "Ah, your Excellency used independent judgment.  Thou
+art a judge of men.  But does it make any difference that the man is a
+thief and a murderer--a murderer?"
+
+David's eyes darkened, as they were wont to do when he was moved or
+shocked.
+
+"Shall one only deal, then, with those who have neither stolen nor slain
+--is that the rule of the just in Egypt?"
+
+Nahoum raised his eyes to the ceiling as though in amiable inquiry, and
+began to finger a string of beads as a nun might tell her paternosters.
+"If that were the rule," he answered, after a moment, "how should any man
+be served in Egypt?  Hereabouts is a man's life held cheap, else I had
+not been thy guest to-night; and Kaid's Palace itself would be empty, if
+every man in it must be honest.  But it is the custom of the place for
+political errors to be punished by a hidden hand; we do not call it
+murder."
+
+"What is murder, friend?"
+
+"It is such a crime as that of Mahommed yonder, who killed--"
+
+David interposed.  "I do not wish to know his crime.  That is no affair
+between thee and me."
+
+Nahoum fingered his beads meditatively.  "It was an affair of the
+housetops in his town of Manfaloot.  I have only mentioned it because I
+know what view the English take of killing, and how set thou art to have
+thy household above reproach, as is meet in a Christian home.  So, I took
+it, would be thy mind--which Heaven fill with light for Egypt's sake!--
+that thou wouldst have none about thee who were not above reproach,
+neither liars, nor thieves, nor murderers."
+
+"But thee would serve with me, friend," rejoined David quietly.  "Thee
+has men's lives against thy account."
+
+"Else had mine been against their account."
+
+"Was it not so with Mahommed?  If so, according to the custom of the
+land, then Mahommed is as immune as thou art."
+
+"Saadat, like thee I am a Christian, yet am I also Oriental, and what is
+crime with one race is none with another.  At the Palace two days past
+thou saidst thou hadst never killed a man; and I know that thy religion
+condemns killing even in war.  Yet in Egypt thou wilt kill, or thou shalt
+thyself be killed, and thy aims will come to naught.  When, as thou
+wouldst say, thou hast sinned, hast taken a man's life, then thou wilt
+understand.  Thou wilt keep this fellow Mahommed, then?"
+
+"I understand, and I will keep him."
+
+"Surely thy heart is large and thy mind great.  It moveth above small
+things.  Thou dost not seek riches here?"
+
+"I have enough; my wants are few."
+
+"There is no precedent for one in office to withhold his hand from profit
+and backsheesh."
+
+"Shall we not try to make a precedent?"
+
+"Truthfulness will be desolate--like a bird blown to sea, beating 'gainst
+its doom."
+
+"Truth will find an island in the sea."
+
+"If Egypt is that sea, Saadat, there is no island."
+
+David came over close to Nahoum, and looked him in the eyes.
+
+"Surely I can speak to thee, friend, as to one understanding.  Thou art a
+Christian--of the ancient fold.  Out of the East came the light.  Thy
+Church has preserved the faith.  It is still like a lamp in the mist and
+the cloud in the East.  Thou saidst but now that thy heart was with my
+purpose.  Shall the truth that I would practise here not find an island
+in this sea--and shall it not be the soul of Nahoum Pasha?"
+
+"Have I not given my word?  Nay, then, I swear it by the tomb of my
+brother, whom Death met in the highway, and because he loved the sun,
+and the talk of men, and the ways of women, rashly smote him out of the
+garden of life into the void.  Even by his tomb I swear it."
+
+"Hast thou, then, such malice against Death?  These things cannot happen
+save by the will of God."
+
+"And by the hand of man.  But I have no cause for revenge.  Foorgat died
+in his sleep like a child.  Yet if it had been the hand of man, Prince
+Kaid or any other, I would not have held my hand until I had a life for
+his."
+
+"Thou art a Christian, yet thou wouldst meet one wrong by another?"
+
+"I am an Oriental."  Then, with a sudden change of manner, he added:
+"But thou hast a Christianity the like of which I have never seen.  I
+will learn of thee, Saadat, and thou shalt learn of me also many things
+which I know.  They will help thee to understand Egypt and the place
+where thou wilt be set--if so be my life is saved, and by thy hand."
+
+Mahommed entered, and came to David.  "Where wilt thou sleep, Saadat?"
+he asked.
+
+"The pasha will sleep yonder," David replied, pointing to another room.
+"I will sleep here."  He laid a hand upon the couch where he sat.
+
+Nahoum rose and, salaaming, followed Mahommed to the other room.
+
+In a few moments the house was still, and remained so for hours.  Just
+before dawn the curtain of Nahoum's room was drawn aside, the Armenian
+entered stealthily, and moved a step towards the couch where David lay.
+Suddenly he was stopped by a sound.  He glanced towards a corner near
+David's feet.  There sat Mahommed watching, a neboot of dom-wood across
+his knees.
+
+Their eyes remained fixed upon each other for a moment.  Then Nahoum
+passed back into his bedroom as stealthily as he had come.
+
+Mahommed looked closely at David.  He lay with an arm thrown over his
+head, resting softly, a moisture on his forehead as on that of a sleeping
+child.
+
+"Saadat!  Saadat!" said Mahommed softly to the sleeping figure, scarcely
+above his breath, and then with his eyes upon the curtained room
+opposite, began to whisper words from the Koran:
+
+"In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful--"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+AGAINST THE HOUR OF MIDNIGHT
+
+Achmet the Ropemaker was ill at ease.  He had been set a task in which
+he had failed.  The bright Cairene sun starkly glittering on the French
+chandeliers and Viennese mirrors, and beating on the brass trays and
+braziers by the window, irritated him.  He watched the flies on the wall
+abstractedly; he listened to the early peripatetic salesmen crying their
+wares in the streets leading to the Palace; he stroked his cadaverous
+cheek with yellow fingers; he listened anxiously for a footstep.
+Presently he straightened himself up, and his fingers ran down the front
+of his coat to make sure that it was buttoned from top to bottom.  He
+grew a little paler.  He was less stoical and apathetic than most
+Egyptians.  Also he was absurdly vain, and he knew that his vanity would
+receive rough usage.
+
+Now the door swung open, and a portly figure entered quickly.  For so
+large a man Prince Kaid was light and subtle in his movements.  His face
+was mobile, his eye keen and human.
+
+Achmet salaamed low.  "The gardens of the First Heaven be thine, and the
+uttermost joy, Effendina," he said elaborately.
+
+"A thousand colours to the rainbow of thy happiness," answered Kaid
+mechanically, and seated himself cross-legged on a divan, taking a
+narghileh from the black slave who had glided ghostlike behind him.
+
+"What hour didst thou find him?  Where hast thou placed him?" he added,
+after a moment.
+
+Achmet salaamed once more.  "I have burrowed without ceasing, but the
+holes are empty, Effendina," he returned, abjectly and nervously.
+
+He had need to be concerned.  The reply was full of amazement and anger.
+"Thou hast not found him?  Thou hast not brought Nahoum to me?"  Kaid's
+eyes were growing reddish; no good sign for those around him, for any
+that crossed him or his purposes.
+
+"A hundred eyes failed to search him out.  Ten thousand piastres did not
+find him; the kourbash did not reveal him."
+
+Kaid's frown grew heavier.  "Thou shalt bring Nahoum to me by midnight
+to-morrow!"
+
+"But if he has escaped, Effendina?"  Achmet asked desperately.  He had a
+peasant's blood; fear of power was ingrained.
+
+"What was thy business but to prevent escape?  Son of a Nile crocodile,
+if he has escaped, thou too shalt escape from Egypt--into Fazougli.
+Fool, Nahoum is no coward.  He would remain.  He is in Egypt."
+
+"If he be in Egypt, I will find him, Effendina.  Have I ever failed?
+When thou hast pointed, have I not brought?  Have there not been many,
+Effendina?  Should I not bring Nahoum, who has held over our heads the
+rod?"
+
+Kaid looked at him meditatively, and gave no answer to the question.
+"He reached too far," he muttered.  "Egypt has one master only."
+
+The door opened softly and the black slave stole in.  His lips moved, but
+scarce a sound travelled across the room.  Kaid understood, and made a
+gesture.  An instant afterwards the vast figure of Higli Pasha bulked
+into the room.  Again there were elaborate salutations and salaams, and
+Kaid presently said:
+
+"Foorgat?"
+
+"Effendina," answered High, "it is not known how he died.  He was in this
+Palace alive at night.  In the morning he was found in bed at his own
+home."
+
+"There was no wound?"
+
+"None, Effendina."
+
+"The thong?"
+
+"There was no mark, Effendina."
+
+"Poison?"
+
+"There was no sign, Effendina."
+
+"Diamond-dust?"
+
+"Impossible, Effendina.  There was not time.  He was alive and well here
+at the Palace at eleven, and--" Kaid made an impatient gesture.  "By the
+stone in the Kaabah, but it is not reasonable that Foorgat should die in
+his bed like a babe and sleep himself into heaven!  Fate meant him for a
+violent end; but ere that came there was work to do for me.  He had a
+gift for scenting treason--and he had treasure."  His eyes shut and
+opened again with a look not pleasant to see.  "But since it was that he
+must die so soon, then the loan he promised must now be a gift from the
+dead, if he be dead, if he be not shamming.  Foorgat was a dire jester."
+
+"But now it is no jest, Effendina.  He is in his grave."
+
+"In his grave!  Bismillah!  In his grave, dost thou say?"
+
+High's voice quavered.  "Yesterday before sunset, Effendina.  By Nahoum's
+orders."
+
+"I ordered the burial for to-day.  By the gates of hell, but who shall
+disobey me!"
+
+"He was already buried when the Effendina's orders came," High pleaded
+anxiously.
+
+"Nahoum should have been taken yesterday," he rejoined, with malice in
+his eyes.
+
+"If I had received the orders of the Effendina on the night when the
+Effendina dismissed Nahoum--" Achmet said softly, and broke off.
+
+"A curse upon thine eyes that did not see thy duty!" Kaid replied
+gloomily.  Then he turned to High.  "My seal has been put upon Foorgat's
+doors?  His treasure-places have been found?  The courts have been
+commanded as to his estate, the banks--"
+
+"It was too late, Effendina," replied High hopelessly.  Kaid got to his
+feet slowly, rage possessing him.  "Too late!  Who makes it too late when
+I command?"
+
+"When Foorgat was found dead, Nahoum at once seized the palace and the
+treasures.  Then he went to the courts and to the holy men, and claimed
+succession.  That was while it was yet early morning.  Then he instructed
+the banks.  The banks hold Foorgat's fortune against us, Effendina."
+
+"Foorgat had turned Mahommedan.  Nahoum is a Christian.  My will is law.
+Shall a Christian dog inherit from a true believer?  The courts, the
+Wakfs shall obey me.  And thou, son of a burnt father, shalt find Nahoum!
+Kaid shall not be cheated.  Foorgat pledged the loan.  It is mine.  Allah
+scorch thine eyes!" he added fiercely to Achmet, "but thou shalt find
+this Christian gentleman, Nahoum."
+
+Suddenly, with a motion of disgust, he sat down, and taking the stem of
+the narghileh, puffed vigorously in silence.  Presently in a red fury he
+cried: "Go--go--go, and bring me back by midnight Nahoum, and Foorgat's
+treasures, to the last piastre.  Let every soldier be a spy, if thine own
+spies fail."
+
+As they turned to go, the door opened again, the black slave appeared,
+and ushered David into the room.  David salaamed, but not low, and stood
+still.
+
+On the instant Kaid changed,  The rage left his face.  He leaned forward
+eagerly, the cruel and ugly look faded slowly from his eyes.
+
+"May thy days of life be as a river with sands of gold, effendi," he said
+gently.  He had a voice like music.  "May the sun shine in thy heart and
+fruits of wisdom flourish there, Effendina," answered David quietly.  He
+saluted the others gravely, and his eyes rested upon Achmet in a way
+which Higli Pasha noted for subsequent gossip.
+
+Kaid pulled at his narghileh for a moment, mumbling good-humouredly to
+himself and watching the smoke reel away; then, with half-shut eyes, he
+said to David: "Am I master in Egypt or no, effendi?"
+
+"In ruling this people the Prince of Egypt stands alone," answered David.
+"There is no one between him and the people.  There is no Parliament."
+
+"It is in my hand, then, to give or to withhold, to make or to break?"
+Kaid chuckled to have this tribute, as he thought, from a Christian, who
+did not blink at Oriental facts, and was honest.
+
+David bowed his head to Kaid's words.
+
+"Then if it be my hand that lifts up or casts down, that rewards or that
+punishes, shall my arm not stretch into the darkest corner of Egypt to
+bring forth a traitor?  Shall it not be so?"
+
+"It belongs to thy power," answered David.  "It is the ancient custom of
+princes here.  Custom is law, while it is yet the custom."
+
+Kaid looked at him enigmatically for a moment, then smiled grimly--he
+saw the course of the lance which David had thrown.  He bent his look
+fiercely on Achmet and Higli.  "Ye have heard.  Truth is on his lips.
+I have stretched out my arm.  Ye are my arm, to reach for and gather in
+Nahoum and all that is his."  He turned quickly to David again.  "I have
+given this hawk, Achmet, till to-morrow night to bring Nahoum to me," he
+explained.
+
+"And if he fails--a penalty?  He will lose his place?" asked David, with
+cold humour.
+
+"More than his place," Kaid rejoined, with a cruel smile.
+
+"Then is his place mine, Effendina," rejoined David, with a look which
+could give Achmet no comfort.  "Thou will bring Nahoum--thou?" asked
+Kaid, in amazement.
+
+"I have brought him," answered David.  "Is it not my duty to know the
+will of the Effendina and to do it, when it is just and right?"
+
+"Where is he--where does he wait?" questioned Kaid eagerly.
+
+"Within the Palace--here," replied David.  "He awaits his fate in thine
+own dwelling, Effendina."  Kaid glowered upon Achmet.  "In the years
+which Time, the Scytheman, will cut from thy life, think, as thou fastest
+at Ramadan or feastest at Beiram, how Kaid filled thy plate when thou
+wast a beggar, and made thee from a dog of a fellah into a pasha.  Go to
+thy dwelling, and come here no more," he added sharply.  "I am sick of
+thy yellow, sinful face."
+
+Achmet made no reply, but, as he passed beyond the door with Higli, he
+said in a whisper: "Come--to Harrik and the army!  He shall be deposed.
+The hour is at hand."  High answered him faintly, however.  He had not
+the courage of the true conspirator, traitor though he was.
+
+As they disappeared, Kaid made a wide gesture of friendliness to David,
+and motioned to a seat, then to a narghileh.  David seated himself, took
+the stem of a narghileh in his mouth for an instant, then laid it down
+again and waited.
+
+"Nahoum--I do not understand," Kaid said presently, his eyes gloating.
+
+"He comes of his own will, Effendina."
+
+"Wherefore?"  Kaid could not realise the truth.  This truth was not
+Oriental on the face of it.  "Effendina, he comes to place his life in
+thy hands.  He would speak with thee."
+
+"How is it thou dost bring him?"
+
+"He sought me to plead for him with thee, and because I knew his peril,
+I kept him with me and brought him hither but now."
+
+"Nahoum went to thee?"  Kaid's eyes peered abstractedly into the distance
+between the almost shut lids.  That Nahoum should seek David, who had
+displaced him from his high office, was scarcely Oriental, when his every
+cue was to have revenge on his rival.  This was a natural sequence to his
+downfall.  It was understandable.  But here was David safe and sound.
+Was it, then, some deeper scheme of future vengeance?  The Oriental
+instinctively pierced the mind of the Oriental.  He could have realised
+fully the fierce, blinding passion for revenge which had almost overcome
+Nahoum's calculating mind in the dark night, with his foe in the next
+room, which had driven him suddenly from his bed to fall upon David, only
+to find Mahommed Hassan watching--also with the instinct of the Oriental.
+
+Some future scheme of revenge?  Kaid's eyes gleamed red.  There would be
+no future for Nahoum.  "Why did Nahoum go to thee?" he asked again
+presently.
+
+"That I might beg his life of thee, Highness, as I said," David replied.
+
+"I have not ordered his death."
+
+David looked meditatively at him.  "It was agreed between us yesterday
+that I should speak plainly--is it not so?"
+
+Kaid nodded, and leaned back among the cushions.
+
+"If what the Effendina intends is fulfilled, there is no other way but
+death for Nahoum," added David.  "What is my intention, effendi?"
+
+"To confiscate the fortune left by Foorgat Bey.  Is it not so?"
+
+"I had a pledge from Foorgat--a loan."
+
+"That is the merit of the case, Effendina.  I am otherwise concerned.
+There is the law.  Nahoum inherits.  Shouldst thou send him to Fazougli,
+he would still inherit."
+
+"He is a traitor."
+
+"Highness, where is the proof?"
+
+"I know.  My friends have disappeared one by one--Nahoum.  Lands have
+been alienated from me--Nahoum.  My income has declined--Nahoum.  I have
+given orders and they have not been fulfilled--Nahoum.  Always, always
+some rumour of assassination, or of conspiracy, or the influence and
+secret agents of the Sultan--all Nahoum.  He is a traitor.  He has grown
+rich while I borrow from Europe to pay my army and to meet the demands of
+the Sultan."
+
+"What man can offer evidence in this save the Effendina who would profit
+by his death?"
+
+"I speak of what I know.  I satisfy myself.  It is enough."
+
+"Highness, there is a better way; to satisfy the people, for whom thee
+lives.  None should stand between.  Is not the Effendina a father to
+them?"
+
+"The people!  Would they not say Nahoum had got his due if he were
+blotted from their sight?"
+
+"None has been so generous to the poor, so it is said by all.  His hand
+has been upon the rich only.  Now, Effendina, he has brought hither the
+full amount of all he has received and acquired in thy service.  He would
+offer it in tribute."
+
+Kaid smiled sardonically.  "It is a thin jest.  When a traitor dies the
+State confiscates his goods!"
+
+"Thee calls him traitor.  Does thee believe he has ever conspired against
+thy life?"
+
+Kaid shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Let me answer for thee, Effendina.  Again and again he has defeated
+conspiracy.  He has blotted it out--by the sword and other means.  He has
+been a faithful servant to his Prince at least.  If he has done after the
+manner of all others in power here, the fault is in the system, not in
+the man alone.  He has been a friend to thee, Kaid."
+
+"I hope to find in thee a better."
+
+"Why should he not live?"
+
+"Thou hast taken his place."
+
+"Is it, then, the custom to destroy those who have served thee, when they
+cease to serve?"  David rose to his feet quickly.  His face was shining
+with a strange excitement.  It gave him a look of exaltation, his lips
+quivered with indignation.  "Does thee kill because there is silence in
+the grave?"
+
+Kaid blew a cloud of smoke slowly.  "Silence in the grave is a fact
+beyond dispute," he said cynically.
+
+"Highness, thee changes servants not seldom," rejoined David meaningly.
+"It may be that my service will be short.  When I go, will the long arm
+reach out for me in the burrows where I shall hide?"
+
+Kaid looked at him with ill-concealed admiration.  "Thou art an
+Englishman, not an Egyptian, a guest, not a subject, and under no law
+save my friendship."  Then he added scornfully: "When an Englishman in
+England leaves office, no matter how unfaithful, though he be a friend of
+any country save his own, they send him to the House of Lords--or so I
+was told in France when I was there.  What does it matter to thee what
+chances to Nahoum?  Thou hast his place with me.  My secrets are thine.
+They shall all be thine--for years I have sought an honest man.  Thou art
+safe whether to go or to stay."
+
+"It may be so.  I heed it not.  My life is as that of a gull--if the wind
+carry it out to sea, it is lost.  As my uncle went I shall go one day.
+Thee will never do me ill; but do I not know that I shall have foes at
+every corner, behind every mooshrabieh screen, on every mastaba, in the
+pasha's court-yard, by every mosque?  Do I not know in what peril I serve
+Egypt?"
+
+"Yet thou wouldst keep alive Nahoum!  He will dig thy grave deep, and
+wait long."
+
+"He will work with me for Egypt, Effendina."  Kaid's face darkened.
+
+"What is thy meaning?"
+
+"I ask Nahoum's life that he may serve under me, to do those things thou
+and I planned yesterday--the land, taxation, the army, agriculture, the
+Soudan.  Together we will make Egypt better and greater and richer--the
+poor richer, even though the rich be poorer."
+
+"And Kaid--poorer?"
+
+"When Egypt is richer, the Prince is richer, too.  Is not the Prince
+Egypt?  Highness, yesterday--yesterday thee gave me my commission.  If
+thee will not take Nahoum again into service to aid me, I must not
+remain.  I cannot work alone."
+
+"Thou must have this Christian Oriental to work with thee?"  He looked at
+David closely, then smiled sardonically, but with friendliness to David
+in his eyes.  "Nahoum has prayed to work with thee, to be a slave where
+he was master?  He says to thee that he would lay his heart upon the
+altar of Egypt?"  Mordant, questioning humour was in his voice.
+
+David inclined his head.
+
+"He would give up all that is his?"
+
+"It is so, Effendina."
+
+"All save Foorgat's heritage?"
+
+"It belonged to their father.  It is a due inheritance."
+
+Kaid laughed sarcastically.  "It was got in Mehemet Ali's service."
+
+"Nathless, it is a heritage, Effendina.  He would give that fortune back
+again to Egypt in work with me, as I shall give of what is mine, and of
+what I am, in the name of God, the all-merciful!"
+
+The smile faded out of Kaid's face, and wonder settled on it.  What
+manner of man was this?  His life, his fortune for Egypt, a country alien
+to him, which he had never seen till six months ago!  What kind of being
+was behind the dark, fiery eyes and the pale, impassioned face?  Was he
+some new prophet?  If so, why should he not have cast a spell upon
+Nahoum?  Had he not bewitched himself, Kaid, one of the ablest princes
+since Alexander or Amenhotep?  Had Nahoum, then, been mastered and won?
+Was ever such power?  In how many ways had it not been shown!  He had
+fought for his uncle's fortune, and had got it at last yesterday without
+a penny of backsheesh.  Having got his will, he was now ready to give
+that same fortune to the good of Egypt--but not to beys and pashas and
+eunuchs (and that he should have escaped Mizraim was the marvel beyond
+all others!), or even to the Prince Pasha; but to that which would make
+"Egypt better and greater and richer--the poor richer, even though the
+rich be poorer!" Kaid chuckled to himself at that.  To make the rich
+poorer would suit him well, so long as he remained rich.  And, if riches
+could be got, as this pale Frank proposed, by less extortion from the
+fellah and less kourbash, so much the happier for all.
+
+He was capable of patriotism, and this Quaker dreamer had stirred it in
+him a little.  Egypt, industrial in a real sense; Egypt, paying her own
+way without tyranny and loans: Egypt, without corvee, and with an army
+hired from a full public purse; Egypt, grown strong and able to resist
+the suzerainty and cruel tribute--that touched his native goodness of
+heart, so long, in disguise; it appealed to the sense of leadership in
+him; to the love of the soil deep in his bones; to regard for the common
+people--for was not his mother a slave?  Some distant nobleness trembled
+in him, while yet the arid humour of the situation flashed into his eyes,
+and, getting to his feet, he said to David: "Where is Nahoum?"
+
+David told him, and he clapped his hands.  The black slave entered,
+received an order, and disappeared.  Neither spoke, but Kaid's face was
+full of cheerfulness.
+
+Presently Nahoum entered and salaamed low, then put his hand upon his
+turban.  There was submission, but no cringing or servility in his
+manner.  His blue eyes looked fearlessly before him.  His face was not
+paler than its wont.  He waited for Kaid to speak.
+
+"Peace be to thee," Kaid murmured mechanically.
+
+"And to thee, peace, O Prince," answered Nahoum.  "May the feet of Time
+linger by thee, and Death pass thy house forgetful."
+
+There was silence for a moment, and then Kaid spoke again.  "What are thy
+properties and treasure?" he asked sternly.
+
+Nahoum drew forth a paper from his sleeve, and handed it to Kaid without
+a word.  Kaid glanced at it hurriedly, then said: "This is but nothing.
+What hast thou hidden from me?"
+
+"It is all I have got in thy service, Highness," he answered boldly.
+"All else I have given to the poor; also to spies--and to the army."
+
+"To spies--and to the army?" asked Kaid slowly, incredulously.
+
+"Wilt thou come with me to the window, Effendina?"  Kaid, wondering, went
+to the great windows which looked on to the Palace square.  There, drawn
+up, were a thousand mounted men as black as ebony, wearing shining white
+metal helmets and fine chain-armour and swords and lances like medieval
+crusaders.  The horses, too, were black, and the mass made a barbaric
+display belonging more to another period in the world's history.  This
+regiment of Nubians Kaid had recruited from the far south, and had
+maintained at his own expense.  When they saw him at the window now,
+their swords clashed on their thighs and across their breasts, and they
+raised a great shout of greeting.
+
+"Well?" asked Kaid, with a ring to the voice.  "They are loyal,
+Effendina, every man.  But the army otherwise is honeycombed with
+treason.  Effendina, my money has been busy in the army paying and
+bribing officers, and my spies were costly.  There has been sedition--
+conspiracy; but until I could get the full proofs I waited; I could but
+bribe and wait.  Were it not for the money I had spent, there might have
+been another Prince of Egypt."
+
+Kald's face darkened.  He was startled, too.  He had been taken unawares.
+"My brother Harrik--!"
+
+"And I should have lost my place, lost all for which I cared.  I had no
+love for money; it was but a means.  I spent it for the State--for the
+Effendina, and to keep my place.  I lost my place, however, in another
+way."
+
+"Proofs!  Proofs!"  Kaid's voice was hoarse with feeling.
+
+"I have no proofs against Prince Harrik, no word upon paper.  But there
+are proofs that the army is seditious, that, at any moment, it may
+revolt."
+
+"Thou hast kept this secret?" questioned Kaid darkly and suspiciously.
+
+"The time had not come.  Read, Effendina," he added, handing some papers
+over.
+
+"But it is the whole army!" said Kaid aghast, as he read.  He was
+convinced.
+
+"There is only one guilty," returned Nahoum.  Their eyes met.  Oriental
+fatalism met inveterate Oriental distrust and then instinctively Kaid's
+eyes turned to David.  In the eyes of the Inglesi was a different thing.
+The test of the new relationship had come.  Ferocity was in his heart, a
+vitriolic note was in his voice as he said to David, "If this be true--
+the army rotten, the officers disloyal, treachery under every tunic--
+bismillah, speak!"
+
+"Shall it not be one thing at a time, Effendina?" asked David.  He made
+a gesture towards Nahoum.  Kaid motioned to a door.  "Wait yonder," he
+said darkly to Nahoum.  As the door opened, and Nahoum disappeared
+leisurely and composedly, David caught a glimpse of a guard of armed
+Nubians in leopard-skins filed against the white wall of the other room.
+
+"What is thy intention towards Nahoum, Effendina?" David asked
+presently.
+
+Kaid's voice was impatient.  "Thou hast asked his life--take it; it is
+thine; but if I find him within these walls again until I give him leave,
+he shall go as Foorgat went."
+
+"What was the manner of Foorgat's going?" asked David quietly.
+
+"As a wind blows through a court-yard, and the lamp goes out, so he went
+--in the night.  Who can say?  Wherefore speculate?  He is gone.  It is
+enough.  Were it not for thee, Egypt should see Nahoum no more."
+
+David sighed, and his eyes closed for an instant.  "Effendina, Nahoum has
+proved his faith--is it not so?"  He pointed to the documents in Kaid's
+hands.
+
+A grim smile passed over Kaid's face.  Distrust of humanity, incredulity,
+cold cynicism, were in it.  "Wheels within wheels, proofs within proofs,"
+he said.  "Thou hast yet to learn the Eastern heart.  When thou seest
+white in the East, call it black, for in an instant it will be black.
+Malaish, it is the East!  Have I not trusted--did I not mean well by all?
+Did I not deal justly?  Yet my justice was but darkness of purpose, the
+hidden terror to them all.  So did I become what thou findest me and dost
+believe me--a tyrant, in whose name a thousand do evil things of which I
+neither hear nor know.  Proof!  When a woman lies in your arms, it is not
+the moment to prove her fidelity.  Nahoum has crawled back to my feet
+with these things, and by the beard of the Prophet they are true!"  He
+looked at the papers with loathing.  "But what his purpose was when he
+spied upon and bribed my army I know not.  Yet, it shall be said, he has
+held Harrik back--Harrik, my brother.  Son of Sheitan and slime of the
+Nile, have I not spared Harrik all these years!"
+
+"Hast thou proof, Effendina?"
+
+"I have proof enough; I shall have more soon.  To save their lives,
+these, these will tell.  I have their names here."  He tapped the papers.
+"There are ways to make them tell.  Now, speak, effendi, and tell me what
+I shall do to Harrik."
+
+"Wouldst thou proclaim to Egypt, to the Sultan, to the world that the
+army is disloyal?  If these guilty men are seized, can the army be
+trusted?  Will it not break away in fear?  Yonder Nubians are not enough
+--a handful lost in the melee.  Prove the guilt of him who perverted the
+army and sought to destroy thee.  Punish him."
+
+"How shall there be proof save through those whom he has perverted?
+There is no writing."
+
+"There is proof," answered David calmly.
+
+"Where shall I find it?" Kaid laughed contemptuously.
+
+"I have the proof," answered David gravely.  "Against Harrik?"
+
+"Against Prince Harrik Pasha."
+
+"Thou--what dost thou know?"
+
+"A woman of the Prince heard him give instructions for thy disposal,
+Effendina, when the Citadel should turns its guns upon Cairo and the
+Palace.  She was once of thy harem.  Thou didst give her in marriage,
+and she came to the harem of Prince Harrik at last.  A woman from without
+who sang to her--a singing girl, an al'mah--she trusted with the paper to
+warn thee, Effendina, in her name.  Her heart had remembrance of thee.
+Her foster-brother Mahommed Hassan is my servant.  Him she told, and
+Mahommed laid the matter before me this morning.  Here is a sign by which
+thee will remember her, so she said.  Zaida she was called here."  He
+handed over an amulet which had one red gem in the centre.
+
+Kaid's face had set into fierce resolution, but as he took the amulet his
+eyes softened.
+
+"Zaida.  Inshallah!  Zaida, she was called.  She has the truth almost of
+the English.  She could not lie ever.  My heart smote me concerning her,
+and I gave her in marriage."  Then his face darkened again, and his teeth
+showed in malice.  A demon was roused in him.  He might long ago have
+banished the handsome and insinuating Harrik, but he had allowed him
+wealth and safety--and now .  .  .
+
+His intention was unmistakable.
+
+"He shall die the death," he said.  "Is it not so?" he added fiercely to
+David, and gazed at him fixedly.  Would this man of peace plead for the
+traitor, the would-be fratricide?
+
+"He is a traitor; he must die," answered David slowly.
+
+Kald's eyes showed burning satisfaction.  "If he were thy brother, thou
+wouldst kill him?"
+
+"I would give a traitor to death for the country's sake.  There is no
+other way."
+
+"To-night he shall die."
+
+"But with due trial, Effendina?"
+
+"Trial--is not the proof sufficient?"
+
+"But if he confess, and give evidence himself, and so offer himself to
+die?"
+
+"Is Harrik a fool?" answered Kaid, with scorn.
+
+If there be a trial and sentence is given, the truth concerning the army
+must appear.  Is that well?  Egypt will shake to its foundations--to the
+joy of its enemies."
+
+"Then he shall die secretly."
+
+"The Prince Pasha of Egypt will be called a murderer."
+
+Kaid shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"The Sultan--Europe--is it well?"
+
+"I will tell the truth," Kaid rejoined angrily.
+
+"If the Effendina will trust me, Prince Harrik shall confess his crime
+and pay the penalty also."
+
+"What is thy purpose?"
+
+"I will go to his palace and speak with him."
+
+"Seize him?"
+
+"I have no power to seize him, Effendina."
+
+"I will give it.  My Nubians shall go also."
+
+"Effendina, I will go alone.  It is the only way.  There is great danger
+to the throne.  Who can tell what a night will bring forth?"
+
+"If Harrik should escape--"
+
+"If I were an Egyptian and permitted Harrik to escape, my life would pay
+for my failure.  If I failed, thou wouldst not succeed.  If I am to serve
+Egypt, there must be trust in me from thee, or it were better to pause
+now.  If I go, as I shall go, alone, I put my life in danger--is it not
+so?"
+
+Suddenly Kaid sat down again among his cushions.  "Inshallah!  In the
+name of God, be it so.  Thou art not as other men.  There is something in
+thee above my thinking.  But I will not sleep till I see thee again."
+
+"I shall see thee at midnight, Effendina.  Give me the ring from thy
+finger."
+
+Kaid passed it over, and David put it in his pocket.  Then he turned to
+go.
+
+"Nahoum?" he asked.
+
+"Take him hence.  Let him serve thee if it be thy will.  Yet I cannot
+understand it.  The play is dark.  Is he not an Oriental?"
+
+"He is a Christian."
+
+Kaid laughed sourly, and clapped his hands for the slave.
+
+In a moment David and Nahoum were gone.  "Nahoum, a Christian!
+Bismillah!" murmured Kaid scornfully, then fell to pondering darkly over
+the evil things he had heard.
+
+Meanwhile the Nubians in their glittering armour waited without in the
+blistering square.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE JEHAD AND THE LIONS
+
+"Allah hu Achbar!  Allah hu Achbar!  Ashhadu an la illaha illalla!"  The
+sweetly piercing, resonant voice of the Muezzin rang far and commandingly
+on the clear evening air, and from bazaar and crowded street the faithful
+silently hurried to the mosques, leaving their slippers at the door,
+while others knelt where the call found them, and touched their foreheads
+to the ground.
+
+In his palace by the Nile, Harrik, the half-brother of the Prince Pasha,
+heard it, and breaking off from conversation with two urgent visitors,
+passed to an alcove near, dropping a curtain behind him.  Kneeling
+reverently on the solitary furniture of the room--a prayer-rug from
+Medina--he lost himself as completely in his devotions as though his life
+were an even current of unforbidden acts and motives.
+
+Cross-legged on the great divan of the room he had left, his less pious
+visitors, unable to turn their thoughts from the dark business on which
+they had come, smoked their cigarettes, talking to each other in tones so
+low as would not have been heard by a European, and with apparent
+listlessness.
+
+Their manner would not have indicated that they were weighing matters of
+life and death, of treason and infamy, of massacre and national shame.
+Only the sombre, smouldering fire of their eyes was evidence of the
+lighted fuse of conspiracy burning towards the magazine.  One look of
+surprise had been exchanged when Harrik Pasha left them suddenly--time
+was short for what they meant to do; but they were Muslims, and they
+resigned themselves.
+
+"The Inglesi must be the first to go; shall a Christian dog rule over
+us?"
+
+It was Achmet the Ropemaker who spoke, his yellow face wrinkling with
+malice, though his voice but murmured hoarsely.
+
+"Nahoum will kill him."  Higli Pasha laughed low--it was like the gurgle
+of water in the narghileh--a voice of good nature and persuasiveness from
+a heart that knew no virtue.  "Bismillah!  Who shall read the meaning of
+it?  Why has he not already killed?"
+
+"Nahoum would choose his own time--after he has saved his life by the
+white carrion.  Kaid will give him his life if the Inglesi asks.  The
+Inglesi, he is mad.  If he were not mad, he would see to it that Nahoum
+was now drying his bones in the sands."
+
+"What each has failed to do for the other shall be done for them,"
+answered Achmet, a hateful leer on his immobile features.  "To-night many
+things shall be made right.  To-morrow there will be places empty and
+places filled.  Egypt shall begin again to-morrow."
+
+"Kaid?"
+
+Achmet stopped smoking for a moment.  "When the khamsin comes, when the
+camels stampede, and the children of the storm fall upon the caravan, can
+it be foretold in what way Fate shall do her work?  So but the end be the
+same--malaish!  We shall be content tomorrow."
+
+Now he turned and looked at his companion as though his mind had chanced
+on a discovery.  "To him who first brings word to a prince who inherits,
+that the reigning prince is dead, belong honour and place," he said.
+
+"Then shall it be between us twain," said High, and laid his hot palm
+against the cold, snaky palm of the other.  "And he to whom the honour
+falls shall help the other."
+
+"Aiwa, but it shall be so," answered Achmet, and then they spoke in lower
+tones still, their eyes on the curtain behind which Harrik prayed.
+
+Presently Harrik entered, impassive, yet alert, his slight, handsome
+figure in sharp contrast to the men lounging in the cushions before him,
+who salaamed as he came forward.  The features were finely chiselled, the
+forehead white and high, the lips sensuous, the eyes fanatical, the look
+concentrated yet abstracted.  He took a seat among the cushions, and,
+after a moment, said to Achmet, in a voice abnormally deep and powerful:
+"Diaz--there is no doubt of Diaz?"
+
+"He awaits the signal.  The hawk flies not swifter than Diaz will act."
+
+"The people--the bazaars--the markets?"
+
+"As the air stirs a moment before the hurricane comes, so the whisper has
+stirred them.  From one lip to another, from one street to another, from
+one quarter to another, the word has been passed--'Nahoum was a
+Christian, but Nahoum was an Egyptian whose heart was Muslim.  The
+stranger is a Christian and an Inglesi.  Reason has fled from the Prince
+Pasha, the Inglesi has bewitched him.  But the hour of deliverance
+draweth nigh.  Be ready!  To-night!'  So has the whisper gone."
+
+Harrik's eyes burned.  "God is great," he said.  "The time has come.  The
+Christians spoil us.  From France, from England, from Austria--it is
+enough.  Kaid has handed us over to the Greek usurers, the Inglesi and
+the Frank are everywhere.  And now this new-comer who would rule Kaid,
+and lay his hand upon Egypt like Joseph of old, and bring back Nahoum,
+to the shame of every Muslim--behold, the spark is to the tinder, it
+shall burn."
+
+"And the hour, Effendina?"
+
+"At midnight.  The guns to be trained on the Citadel, the Palace
+surrounded.  Kaid's Nubians?"
+
+"A hundred will be there, Effendina, the rest a mile away at their
+barracks."  Achmet rubbed his cold palms together in satisfaction.
+
+"And Prince Kaid, Effendina?" asked Higli cautiously.
+
+The fanatical eyes turned away.  "The question is foolish--have ye no
+brains?" he said impatiently.
+
+A look of malignant triumph flashed from Achmet to High, and he said,
+scarce above a whisper: "May thy footsteps be as the wings of the eagle,
+Effendina.  The heart of the pomegranate is not redder than our hearts
+are red for thee.  Cut deep into our hearts, and thou shalt find the last
+beat is for thee--and for the Jehad!"
+
+"The Jehad--ay, the Jehad!  The time is at hand," answered Harrik,
+glowering at the two.  "The sword shall not be sheathed till we have
+redeemed Egypt.  Go your ways, effendis, and peace be on you and on all
+the righteous worshippers of God!"
+
+As High and Achmet left the palace, the voice of a holy man--admitted
+everywhere and treated with reverence--chanting the Koran, came
+somnolently through the court-yard: "Bismillah hirrahmah, nirraheem.
+Elhamdu lillahi sabbila!"
+
+Rocking his body backwards and forwards and dwelling sonorously on each
+vowel, the holy man seemed the incarnation of Muslim piety; but as the
+two conspirators passed him with scarce a glance, and made their way to a
+small gate leading into the great garden bordering on the Nile, his eyes
+watched them sharply.  When they had passed through, he turned towards
+the windows of the harem, still chanting.  For a long time he chanted.
+An occasional servant came and went, but his voice ceased not, and he
+kept his eyes fixed ever on the harem windows.
+
+At last his watching had its reward.  Something fluttered from a window
+to the ground.  Still chanting, he rose and began walking round the great
+court-yard.  Twice he went round, still chanting, but the third time he
+stooped to pick up a little strip of linen which had fallen from the
+window, and concealed it in his sleeve.  Presently he seated himself
+again, and, still chanting, spread out the linen in his palm and read the
+characters upon it.  For an instant there was a jerkiness to the voice,
+and then it droned on resonantly again.  Now the eyes of the holy man
+were fixed on the great gates through which strangers entered, and he was
+seated in the way which any one must take who came to the palace doors.
+
+It was almost dark, when he saw the bowab, after repeated knocking,
+sleepily and grudgingly open the gates to admit a visitor.  There seemed
+to be a moment's hesitation on the bowab's part, but he was presently
+assured by something the visitor showed him, and the latter made his way
+deliberately to the palace doors.  As the visitor neared the holy man,
+who chanted on monotonously, he was suddenly startled to hear between the
+long-drawn syllables the quick words in Arabic:
+
+
+"Beware, Saadat!  See, I am Mahommed Hassan, thy servant!  At midnight
+they surround Kaid's palace--Achmet and Higli--and kill the Prince Pasha.
+Return, Saadat.  Harrik will kill thee."
+
+David made no sign, but with a swift word to the faithful Mahommed
+Hassan, passed on, and was presently admitted to the palace.  As the
+doors closed behind him, he would hear the voice of the holy man still
+chanting: "Waladalleen--Ameen-Ameen!  Waladalleen--Ameen!"
+
+The voice followed him, fainter and fainter, as he passed through the
+great bare corridors with the thick carpets on which the footsteps made
+no sound, until it came, soft and undefined, as it were from a great
+distance.  Then suddenly there fell upon him a sense of the peril of his
+enterprise.  He had been left alone in the vast dim hall while a slave,
+made obsequious by the sight of the ring of the Prince Pasha, sought his
+master.  As he waited he was conscious that people were moving about
+behind the great screens of mooshrabieh which separated this room from
+others, and that eyes were following his every motion.  He had gained
+easy ingress to this place; but egress was a matter of some speculation.
+The doors which had closed behind him might swing one way only!  He had
+voluntarily put himself in the power of a man whose fatal secret he knew.
+He only felt a moment's apprehension, however.  He had been moved to come
+from a whisper in his soul; and he had the sure conviction of the
+predestinarian that he was not to be the victim of "The Scytheman" before
+his appointed time.  His mind resumed its composure, and he watchfully
+waited the return of the slave.
+
+Suddenly he was conscious of some one behind him, though he had heard no
+one approach.  He swung round and was met by the passive face of the
+black slave in personal attendance on Harrik.  The slave did not speak,
+but motioned towards a screen at the end of the room, and moved towards
+it.  David followed.  As they reached it, a broad panel opened, and they
+passed through, between a line of black slaves.  Then there was a sudden
+darkness, and a moment later David was ushered into a room blazing with
+light.  Every inch of the walls was hung with red curtains.  No door was
+visible.  He was conscious of this as the panel clicked behind him, and
+the folds of the red velvet caught his shoulder in falling.  Now he saw
+sitting on a divan on the opposite side of the room Prince Harrik.
+
+David had never before seen him, and his imagination had fashioned a
+different personality.  Here was a combination of intellect, refinement,
+and savagery.  The red, sullen lips stamped the delicate, fanatical face
+with cruelty and barbaric indulgence, while yet there was an intensity in
+the eyes that showed the man was possessed of an idea which mastered him
+--a root-thought.  David was at once conscious of a complex personality,
+of a man in whom two natures fought.  He understood it.  By instinct
+the man was a Mahdi, by heredity he was a voluptuary, that strange
+commingling of the religious and the evil found in so many criminals.
+In some far corner of his nature David felt something akin.  The
+rebellion in his own blood against the fine instinct of his Quaker faith
+and upbringing made him grasp the personality before him.  Had he himself
+been born in these surroundings, under these influences!  The thought
+flashed through his mind like lightning, even as he bowed before Harrik,
+who salaamed and said: "Peace be unto thee!" and motioned him to a seat
+on a divan near and facing him.
+
+"What is thy business with me, effendi?" asked Harrik.
+
+"I come on the business of the Prince Pasha," answered David.
+
+Harrik touched his fez mechanically, then his breast and lips, and a
+cruel smile lurked at the corners of his mouth as he rejoined:
+
+"The feet of them who wear the ring of their Prince wait at no man's
+door.  The carpet is spread for them.  They go and they come as the feet
+of the doe in the desert.  Who shall say, They shall not come; who shall
+say, They shall not return!"
+
+Though the words were spoken with an air of ingenuous welcome, David felt
+the malignity in the last phrase, and knew that now was come the most
+fateful moment of his life.  In his inner being he heard the dreadful
+challenge of Fate.  If he failed in his purpose with this man, he would
+never begin his work in Egypt.  Of his life he did not think--his life
+was his purpose, and the one was nothing without the other.  No other man
+would have undertaken so Quixotic an enterprise, none would have exposed
+himself so recklessly to the dreadful accidents of circumstance.  There
+had been other ways to overcome this crisis, but he had rejected them for
+a course fantastic and fatal when looked at in the light of ordinary
+reason.  A struggle between the East and the West was here to be fought
+out between two wills; between an intellectual libertine steeped in
+Oriental guilt and cruelty and self-indulgence, and a being selfless,
+human, and in an agony of remorse for a life lost by his hand.
+
+Involuntarily David's eyes ran round the room before he replied.  How
+many slaves and retainers waited behind those velvet curtains?
+
+Harrik saw the glance and interpreted it correctly.  With a look of dark
+triumph he clapped his hands.  As if by magic fifty black slaves
+appeared, armed with daggers.  They folded their arms and waited like
+statues.
+
+David made no sign of discomposure, but said slowly: "Dost thou think I
+did not know my danger, Eminence?  Do I seem to thee such a fool?  I came
+alone as one would come to the tent of a Bedouin chief whose son one had
+slain, and ask for food and safety.  A thousand men were mine to command,
+but I came alone.  Is thy guest imbecile?  Let them go.  I have that to
+say which is for Prince Harrik's ear alone."
+
+An instant's hesitation, and Harrik motioned the slaves away.  "What is
+the private word for my ear?" he asked presently, fingering the stem of
+the narghileh.
+
+"To do right by Egypt, the land of thy fathers and thy land; to do right
+by the Prince Pasha, thy brother."
+
+"What is Egypt to thee?  Why shouldst thou bring thine insolence here?
+Couldst thou not preach in thine own bazaars beyond the sea?"
+
+David showed no resentment.  His reply was composed and quiet.  "I am
+come to save Egypt from the work of thy hands."
+
+"Dog of an unbeliever, what hast thou to do with me, or the work of my
+hands?"
+
+David held up Kaid's ring, which had lain in his hand.  "I come from the
+master of Egypt--master of thee, and of thy life, and of all that is
+thine."
+
+"What is Kaid's message to me?" Harrik asked, with an effort at
+unconcern, for David's boldness had in it something chilling to his
+fierce passion and pride.
+
+"The word of the Effendina is to do right by Egypt, to give thyself to
+justice and to peace."
+
+"Have done with parables.  To do right by Egypt wherein, wherefore?"
+The eyes glinted at David like bits of fiery steel.
+
+"I will interpret to thee, Eminence."
+
+"Interpret."  Harrik muttered to himself in rage.  His heart was dark,
+he thirsted for the life of this arrogant Inglesi.  Did the fool not see
+his end?  Midnight was at hand!  He smiled grimly.
+
+"This is the interpretation, O Prince!  Prince Harrik has conspired
+against his brother the Prince Pasha, has treacherously seduced officers
+of the army, has planned to seize Cairo, to surround the Palace and take
+the life of the Prince of Egypt.  For months, Prince, thee has done this:
+and the end of it is that thee shall do right ere it be too late.  Thee
+is a traitor to thy country and thy lawful lord."
+
+Harrik's face turned pale; the stem of the narghileh shook in his
+fingers.  All had been discovered, then!  But there was a thing of dark
+magic here.  It was not a half-hour since he had given the word to strike
+at midnight, to surround the Palace, and to seize the Prince Pasha.
+Achmet--Higli, had betrayed him, then!  Who other?  No one else knew
+save Zaida, and Zaida was in the harem.  Perhaps even now his own palace
+was surrounded.  If it was so, then, come what might, this masterful
+Inglesi should pay the price.  He thought of the den of lions hard by,
+of the cage of tigers-the menagerie not a thousand feet away.  He could
+hear the distant roaring now, and his eyes glittered.  The Christian to
+the wild beasts!  That at least before the end.  A Muslim would win
+heaven by sending a Christian to hell.
+
+Achmet--Higli!  No others knew.  The light of a fateful fanaticism was in
+his eyes.  David read him as an open book, and saw the madness come upon
+him.
+
+"Neither Higli, nor Achmet, nor any of thy fellow-conspirators has
+betrayed thee," David said.  "God has other voices to whisper the truth
+than those who share thy crimes.  I have ears, and the air is full of
+voices."
+
+Harrik stared at him.  Was this Inglesi, then, with the grey coat,
+buttoned to the chin, and the broad black hat which remained on his head
+unlike the custom of the English--was he one of those who saw visions and
+dreamed dreams, even as himself!  Had he not heard last night a voice
+whisper through the dark "Harrik, Harrik, flee to the desert!  The lions
+are loosed upon thee!"  Had he not risen with the voice still in his ears
+and fled to the harem, seeking Zaida, she who had never cringed before
+him, whose beauty he had conquered, but whose face turned from him when
+he would lay his lips on hers?  And, as he fled, had he not heard, as it
+were, footsteps lightly following him--or were they going before him?
+Finding Zaida, had he not told her of the voice, and had she not said:
+"In the desert all men are safe--safe from themselves and safe from
+others; from their own acts and from the acts of others"?  Were the
+lions, then, loosed upon him?  Had he been betrayed?
+
+Suddenly the thought flashed into his mind that his challenger would not
+have thrust himself into danger, given himself to the mouth of the Pit,
+if violence were intended.  There was that inside his robe, than which
+lightning would not be more quick to slay.  Had he not been a hunter of
+repute?  Had he not been in deadly peril with wild beasts, and was he not
+quicker than they?  This man before him was like no other he had ever
+met.  Did voices speak to him?  Were there, then, among the Christians
+such holy men as among the Muslims, who saw things before they happened,
+and read the human mind?  Were there sorcerers among them, as among the
+Arabs?
+
+In any case his treason was known.  What were to be the consequences?
+Diamond-dust in his coffee?  To be dropped into the Nile like a dog?  To
+be smothered in his sleep?--For who could be trusted among all his slaves
+and retainers when it was known he was disgraced, and that the Prince
+Pasha would be happier if Harrik were quiet for ever?
+
+Mechanically he drew out his watch and looked at it.  It was nine
+o'clock.  In three hours more would have fallen the coup.  But from this
+man's words he knew that the stroke was now with the Prince Pasha.  Yet,
+if this pale Inglesi, this Christian sorcerer, knew the truth in a vision
+only, and had not declared it to Kaid, there might still be a chance of
+escape.  The lions were near--it would be a joy to give a Christian to
+the lions to celebrate the capture of Cairo and the throne.  He listened
+intently to the distant rumble of the lions.  There was one cage
+dedicated to vengeance.  Five human beings on whom his terrible anger
+fell in times past had been thrust into it alive.  Two were slaves, one
+was an enemy, one an invader of his harem, and one was a woman, his wife,
+his favourite, the darling of his heart.  When his chief eunuch accused
+her of a guilty love, he had given her paramour and herself to that awful
+death.  A stroke of the vast paw, a smothered roar as the teeth gave into
+the neck of the beautiful Fatima, and then--no more.  Fanaticism had
+caught a note of savage music that tuned it to its height.
+
+"Why art thou here?  For what hast thou come?  Do the spirit voices give
+thee that counsel?" he snarled.
+
+"I am come to ask Prince Harrik to repair the wrong he has done.  When
+the Prince Pasha came to know of thy treason--"
+
+Harrik started.  "Kaid believes thy tale of treason?" he burst out.
+
+"Prince Kaid knows the truth," answered David quietly.  "He might have
+surrounded this palace with his Nubians, and had thee shot against the
+palace walls.  That would have meant a scandal in Egypt and in Europe.
+I besought him otherwise.  It may be the scandal must come, but in
+another way, and--"
+
+"That I, Harrik, must die?"  Harrik's voice seemed far away.  In his own
+ears it sounded strange and unusual.  All at once the world seemed to be
+a vast vacuum in which his brain strove for air, and all his senses were
+numbed and overpowered.  Distempered and vague, his soul seemed spinning
+in an aching chaos.  It was being overpowered by vast elements, and life
+and being were atrophied in a deadly smother.  The awful forces behind
+visible being hung him in the middle space between consciousness and
+dissolution.  He heard David's voice, at first dimly, then
+understandingly.
+
+"There is no other way.  Thou art a traitor.  Thou wouldst have been a
+fratricide.  Thou wouldst have put back the clock in Egypt by a hundred
+years, even to the days of the Mamelukes--a race of slaves and murderers.
+God ordained that thy guilt should be known in time.  Prince, thou art
+guilty.  It is now but a question how thou shalt pay the debt of
+treason."
+
+In David's calm voice was the ring of destiny.  It was dispassionate,
+judicial; it had neither hatred nor pity.  It fell on Harrik's ear as
+though from some far height.  Destiny, the controller--who could escape
+it?
+
+Had he not heard the voices in the night--"The lions are loosed upon
+thee"?  He did not answer David now, but murmured to himself like one in
+a dream.
+
+David saw his mood, and pursued the startled mind into the pit of
+confusion.  "If it become known to Europe that the army is disloyal,
+that its officers are traitors like thee, what shall we find?  England,
+France, Turkey, will land an army of occupation.  Who shall gainsay
+Turkey if she chooses to bring an army here and recover control, remove
+thy family from Egypt, and seize upon its lands and goods?  Dost thou not
+see that the hand of God has been against thee?  He has spoken, and thy
+evil is discovered."
+
+He paused.  Still Harrik did not reply, but looked at him with dilated,
+fascinated eyes.  Death had hypnotised him, and against death and destiny
+who could struggle?  Had not a past Prince Pasha of Egypt safeguarded
+himself from assassination all his life, and, in the end, had he not been
+smothered in his sleep by slaves?
+
+"There are two ways only," David continued--"to be tried and die publicly
+for thy crimes, to the shame of Egypt, its present peril, and lasting
+injury; or to send a message to those who conspired with thee, commanding
+them to return to their allegiance, and another to the Prince Pasha,
+acknowledging thy fault, and exonerating all others.  Else, how many of
+thy dupes shall die!  Thy choice is not life or death, but how thou shalt
+die, and what thou shalt do for Egypt as thou diest.  Thou didst love
+Egypt, Eminence?"
+
+David's voice dropped low, and his last words had a suggestion which went
+like an arrow to the source of all Harrik's crimes, and that also which
+redeemed him in a little.  It got into his inner being.  He roused
+himself and spoke, but at first his speech was broken and smothered.
+
+"Day by day I saw Egypt given over to the Christians," he said.  "The
+Greek, the Italian, the Frenchman, the Englishman, everywhere they
+reached out, their hands and took from us our own.  They defiled our
+mosques; they corrupted our life; they ravaged our trade, they stole our
+customers, they crowded us from the streets where once the faithful lived
+alone.  Such as thou had the ear of the Prince, and such as Nahoum, also
+an infidel, who favoured the infidels of Europe.  And now thou hast come,
+the most dangerous of them all!  Day by day the Muslim has loosed his
+hold on Cairo, and Alexandria, and the cities of Egypt.  Street upon
+street knows him no more.  My heart burned within me.  I conspired for
+Egypt's sake.  I would have made her Muslim once again.  I would have
+fought the Turk and the Frank, as did Mehemet Ali; and if the infidels
+came, I would have turned them back; or if they would not go, I would
+have destroyed them here.  Such as thou should have been stayed at the
+door.  In my own house I would have been master.  We seek not to take up
+our abode in other nations and in the cities of the infidel.  Shall we
+give place to them on our own mastaba, in our own court-yard--hand to
+them the keys of our harems?  I would have raised the Jehad if they vexed
+me with their envoys and their armies."  He paused, panting.
+
+"It would not have availed," was David's quiet answer.  "This land may
+not be as Tibet--a prison for its own people.  If the door opens outward,
+then must it open inward also.  Egypt is the bridge between the East and
+the West.  Upon it the peoples of all nations pass and repass.  Thy plan
+was folly, thy hope madness, thy means to achieve horrible.  Thy dream is
+done.  The army will not revolt, the Prince will not be slain.  Now only
+remains what thou shalt do for Egypt--"
+
+"And thou--thou wilt be left here to lay thy will upon Egypt.  Kaid's ear
+will be in thy hand--thou hast the sorcerer's eye.  I know thy meaning.
+Thou wouldst have me absolve all, even Achmet, and Higli, and Diaz, and
+the rest, and at thy bidding go out into the desert"--he paused--"or into
+the grave."
+
+"Not into the desert," rejoined David firmly.  "Thou wouldst not rest.
+There, in the desert, thou wouldst be a Mahdi.  Since thou must die, wilt
+thou not order it after thine own choice?  It is to die for Egypt."
+
+"Is this the will of Kaid?" asked Harrik, his voice thick with wonder,
+his brain still dulled by the blow of Fate.
+
+"It was not the Effendina's will, but it hath his assent.  Wilt thou
+write the word to the army and also to the Prince?"
+
+He had conquered.  There was a moment's hesitation, then Harrik picked up
+paper and ink that lay near, and said: "I will write to Kaid.  I will
+have naught to do with the army."
+
+"It shall be the whole, not the part," answered David determinedly.  "The
+truth is known.  It can serve no end to withhold the writing to the army.
+Remember what I have said to thee.  The disloyalty of the army must not
+be known.  Canst thou not act after the will of Allah, the all-powerful,
+the all-just, the all-merciful?"
+
+There was an instant's pause, and then suddenly Harrik placed the paper
+in his palm and wrote swiftly and at some length to Kaid.  Laying it
+down, he took another and wrote but a few words--to Achmet and Diaz.
+This message said in brief, "Do not strike.  It is the will of Allah.
+The army shall keep faithful until the day of the Mahdi be come.
+I spoke before the time.  I go to the bosom of my Lord Mahomet."
+
+He threw the papers on the floor before David, who picked them up, read
+them, and put them into his pocket.
+
+"It is well," he said.  "Egypt shall have peace.  And thou, Eminence?"
+
+"Who shall escape Fate?  What I have written I have written."
+
+David rose and salaamed.  Harrik rose also.  "Thou wouldst go, having
+accomplished thy will?" Harrik asked, a thought flashing to his mind
+again, in keeping with his earlier purpose.  Why should this man be left
+to trouble Egypt?
+
+David touched his breast.  "I must bear thy words to the Palace and the
+Citadel."
+
+"Are there not slaves for messengers?"  Involuntarily Harrik turned his
+eyes to the velvet curtains.  No fear possessed David, but he felt the
+keenness of the struggle, and prepared for the last critical moment of
+fanaticism.
+
+"It were a foolish thing to attempt my death," he said calmly.  "I have
+been thy friend to urge thee to do that which saves thee from public
+shame, and Egypt from peril.  I came alone, because I had no fear that
+thou wouldst go to thy death shaming hospitality."
+
+"Thou wast sure I would give myself to death?"
+
+"Even as that I breathe.  Thou wert mistaken; a madness possessed thee;
+but thou, I knew, wouldst choose the way of honour.  I too have had
+dreams--and of Egypt.  If it were for her good, I would die for her."
+
+"Thou art mad.  But the mad are in the hands of God, and--"
+
+Suddenly Harrik stopped.  There came to his ears two distant sounds--the
+faint click of horses' hoofs and that dull rumble they had heard as they
+talked, a sound he loved, the roar of his lions.
+
+He clapped his hands twice, the curtains parted opposite, and a slave
+slid silently forward.
+
+"Quick!  The horses!  What are they?  Bring me word," he said.
+
+The slave vanished.  For a moment there was silence.  The eyes of the two
+men met.  In the minds of both was the same thing.
+
+"Kaid! The Nubians!" Harrik said, at last.  David made no response.
+
+The slave returned, and his voice murmured softly, as though the matter
+were of no concern: "The Nubians--from the Palace."  In an instant he was
+gone again.
+
+"Kaid had not faith in thee," Harrik said grimly.  "But see, infidel
+though thou art, thou trustest me, and thou shalt go thy way.  Take them
+with thee, yonder jackals of the desert.  I will not go with them.  I did
+not choose to live; others chose for me; but I will die after my own
+choice.  Thou hast heard a voice, even as I.  It is too late to flee to
+the desert.  Fate tricks me.  'The lions are loosed on thee'--so the
+voice said to me in the night.  Hark!  dost thou not hear them--the
+lions, Harrik's lions, got out of the uttermost desert?"
+
+David could hear the distant roar, for the menagerie was even part of the
+palace itself.
+
+"Go in peace," continued Harrik soberly and with dignity, "and when Egypt
+is given to the infidel and Muslims are their slaves, remember that
+Harrik would have saved it for his Lord Mahomet, the Prophet of God."
+
+He clapped his hands, and fifty slaves slid from behind the velvet
+curtains.
+
+"I have thy word by the tomb of thy mother that thou wilt take the
+Nubians hence, and leave me in peace?" he asked.
+
+David raised a hand above his head.  "As I have trusted thee, trust thou
+me, Harrik, son of Mahomet."  Harrik made a gesture of dismissal, and
+David salaamed and turned to go.  As the curtains parted for his exit,
+he faced Harrik again.  "Peace be to thee," he said.
+
+But, seated in his cushions, the haggard, fanatical face of Harrik was
+turned from him, the black, flaring eyes fixed on vacancy.  The curtain
+dropped behind David, and through the dim rooms and corridors he passed,
+the slaves gliding beside him, before him, and behind him, until they
+reached the great doors.  As they swung open and the cool night breeze
+blew in his face, a great suspiration of relief passed from him.  What he
+had set out to do would be accomplished in all.  Harrik would
+keep his word.  It was the only way.
+
+As he emerged from the doorway some one fell at his feet, caught his
+sleeve and kissed it.  It was Mahommed Hassan.  Behind Mahommed was a
+little group of officers and a hundred stalwart Nubians.  David motioned
+them towards the great gates, and, without speaking, passed swiftly down
+the pathway and emerged upon the road without.  A moment later he was
+riding towards the Citadel with Harrik's message to Achmet.  In the red-
+curtained room Harrik sat alone, listening until he heard the far clatter
+of hoofs, and knew that the Nubians were gone.  Then the other distant
+sound which had captured his ear came to him again.  In his fancy it grew
+louder and louder.  With it came the voice that called him in the night,
+the voice of a woman--of the wife he had given to the lions for a crime
+against him which she did not commit, which had haunted him all the
+years.  He had seen her thrown to the king of them all, killed in one
+swift instant, and dragged about the den by her warm white neck--this
+slave wife from Albania, his adored Fatima.  And when, afterwards, he
+came to know the truth, and of her innocence, from the chief eunuch who
+with his last breath cleared her name, a terrible anger and despair had
+come upon him.  Time and intrigue and conspiracy had distracted his mind,
+and the Jehad became the fixed aim and end of his life.  Now this was
+gone.  Destiny had tripped him up.  Kaid and the infidel Inglesi had won.
+
+As the one great passion went out like smoke, the woman he loved, whom
+he had given to the lions, the memory of her, some haunting part of her,
+possessed him, overcame him.  In truth, he had heard a voice in the
+night, but not the voice of a spirit.  It was the voice of Zaida, who,
+preying upon his superstitious mind--she knew the hallucination which
+possessed him concerning her he had cast to the lions--and having given
+the terrible secret to Kaid, whom she had ever loved, would still save
+Harrik from the sure vengeance which must fall upon him.  Her design had
+worked, but not as she intended.  She had put a spell of superstition on
+him, and the end would be accomplished, but not by flight to the desert.
+
+Harrik chose the other way.  He had been a hunter.
+
+He was without fear.  The voice of the woman he loved called him.  It
+came to him through the distant roar of the lions as clear as when, with
+one cry of "Harrik !" she had fallen beneath the lion's paw.  He knew now
+why he had kept the great beast until this hour, though tempted again and
+again to slay him.
+
+Like one in a dream, he drew a dagger from the cushions where he sat, and
+rose to his feet.  Leaving the room and passing dark groups of waiting
+slaves, he travelled empty chambers and long corridors, the voices of the
+lions growing nearer and nearer.  He sped faster now, and presently came
+to two great doors, on which he knocked thrice.  The doors opened, and
+two slaves held up lights for him to enter.  Taking a torch from one of
+them, he bade them retire, and the doors clanged behind them.
+
+Harrik held up the torch and came nearer.  In the centre of the room was
+a cage in which one great lion paced to and fro in fury.  It roared at
+him savagely.  It was his roar which had come to Harrik through the
+distance and the night.  He it was who had carried Fatima, the beloved,
+about his cage by that neck in which Harrik had laid his face so often.
+
+The hot flush of conflict and the long anger of the years were on him.
+Since he must die, since Destiny had befooled him, left him the victim of
+the avengers, he would end it here.  Here, against the thing of savage
+hate which had drunk of the veins and crushed the bones of his fair wife,
+he would strike one blow deep and strong and shed the blood of sacrifice
+before his own was shed.
+
+He thrust the torch into the ground, and, with the dagger grasped
+tightly, carefully opened the cage and stepped inside.  The door clicked
+behind him.  The lion was silent now, and in a far corner prepared to
+spring, crouching low.
+
+"Fatima!" Harrik cried, and sprang forward as the wild beast rose at
+him.  He struck deep, drew forth the dagger--and was still.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+ACHMET THE ROPEMAKER STRIKES
+
+War!  War!  The chains of the conscripts clanked in the river villages;
+the wailing of the women affrighted the pigeons in a thousand dovecotes
+on the Nile; the dust of despair was heaped upon the heads of the old,
+who knew that their young would no more return, and that the fields of
+dourha would go ungathered, the water-channels go unattended, and the
+onion-fields be bare.  War!  War!  War!  The strong, the broad-shouldered
+--Aka, Mahmoud, Raschid, Selim, they with the bodies of Seti and the
+faces of Rameses, in their blue yeleks and unsandalled feet--would go
+into the desert as their forefathers did for the Shepherd Kings.  But
+there would be no spoil for them--no slaves with swelling breasts and
+lips of honey; no straight-limbed servants of their pleasure to wait on
+them with caressing fingers; no rich spoils carried back from the fields
+of war to the mud hut, the earth oven, and the thatched roof; no rings of
+soft gold and necklaces of amber snatched from the fingers and bosoms of
+the captive and the dead.  Those days were no more.  No vision of loot or
+luxury allured these.  They saw only the yellow sand, the ever-receding
+oasis, the brackish, undrinkable water, the withered and fruitless date-
+tree, handfuls of dourha for their food by day, and the keen, sharp night
+to chill their half-dead bodies in a half-waking sleep.  And then the
+savage struggle for life--with all the gain to the pashas and the beys,
+and those who ruled over them; while their own wounds grew foul, and, in
+the torturing noon-day heat of the white waste, Death reached out and
+dragged them from the drooping lines to die.  Fighting because they must
+fight--not patriot love, nor understanding, nor sacrifice in their
+hearts.  War!  War!  War!  War!
+
+David had been too late to stop it.  It had grown to a head with
+revolution and conspiracy.  For months before he came conscripts had been
+gathered in the Nile country from Rosetta to Assouan, and here and there,
+far south, tribes had revolted.  He had come to power too late to devise
+another course.  One day, when this war was over, he would go alone, save
+for a faithful few, to deal with these tribes and peoples upon another
+plane than war; but here and now the only course was that which had been
+planned by Kaid and those who counselled him.  Troubled by a deep danger
+drawing near, Kaid had drawn him into his tough service, half-blindly
+catching at his help, with a strange, almost superstitious belief that
+luck and good would come from the alliance; seeing in him a protection
+against wholesale robbery and debt--were not the English masters of
+finance, and was not this Englishman honest, and with a brain of fire
+and an eye that pierced things?
+
+David had accepted the inevitable.  The war had its value.  It would draw
+off to the south--he would see that it was so--Achmet and Higli and Diaz
+and the rest, who were ever a danger.  Not to himself: he did not think
+of that; but to Kaid and to Egypt.  They had been out-manoeuvred, beaten,
+foiled, knew who had foiled them and what they had escaped; congratulated
+themselves, but had no gratitude to him, and still plotted his
+destruction.  More than once his death had been planned, but the dark
+design had come to light--now from the workers of the bazaars, whose
+wires of intelligence pierced everywhere; now from some hungry fellah
+whose yelek he had filled with cakes of dourha beside a bread-shop; now
+from Mahommed Hassan, who was for him a thousand eyes and feet and hands,
+who cooked his food, and gathered round him fellaheen or Copts or
+Soudanese or Nubians whom he himself had tested and found true, and ruled
+them with a hand of plenty and a rod of iron.  Also, from Nahoum's spies
+he learned of plots and counterplots, chiefly on Achmet's part; and these
+he hid from Kaid, while he trusted Nahoum--and not without reason, as
+yet.
+
+The day of Nahoum's wrath and revenge was not yet come; it was his deep
+design to lay the foundation for his own dark actions strong on a rock of
+apparent confidence and devotion.  A long torture and a great over-
+whelming was his design.  He knew himself to be in the scheme of a
+master-workman, and by-and-by he would blunt the chisel and bend the saw;
+but not yet.  Meanwhile, he hated, admired, schemed, and got a sweet
+taste on his tongue from aiding David to foil Achmet--Higli and Diaz were
+of little account; only the injury they felt in seeing the sluices being
+closed on the stream of bribery and corruption kept them in the toils of
+Achmet's conspiracy.  They had saved their heads, but they had not
+learned their lesson yet; and Achmet, blinded by rage, not at all.
+Achmet did not understand clemency.  One by one his plots had failed,
+until the day came when David advised Kaid to send him and his friends
+into the Soudan, with the punitive expedition under loyal generals.  It
+was David's dream that, in the field of war, a better spirit might enter
+into Achmet and his friends; that patriotism might stir in them.
+
+The day was approaching when the army must leave.  Achmet threw dice once
+more.
+
+Evening was drawing down.  Over the plaintive pink and golden glow of
+sunset was slowly being drawn a pervasive silver veil of moonlight.  A
+caravan of camels hunched alone in the middle distance, making for the
+western desert.  Near by, village life manifested itself in heavily laden
+donkeys; in wolfish curs stealing away with refuse into the waste; in
+women, upright and modest, bearing jars of water on their heads; in
+evening fires, where the cover of the pot clattered over the boiling mass
+within; in the voice of the Muezzin calling to prayer.
+
+Returning from Alexandria to Cairo in the special train which Kaid had
+sent for him, David watched the scene with grave and friendly interest.
+There was far, to go before those mud huts of the thousand years would
+give place to rational modern homes; and as he saw a solitary horseman
+spread his sheepskin on the ground and kneel to say his evening prayer,
+as Mahomet had done in his flight between Mecca and Medina, the distance
+between the Egypt of his desire and the ancient Egypt that moved round
+him sharply impressed his mind, and the magnitude of his task settled
+heavily on his spirit.
+
+"But it is the beginning--the beginning," he said aloud to himself,
+looking out upon the green expanses of dourha and Lucerne, and eyeing
+lovingly the cotton-fields here and there, the origin of the industrial
+movement he foresaw--"and some one had to begin.  The rest is as it must
+be--"
+
+There was a touch of Oriental philosophy in his mind--was it not Galilee
+and the Nazarene, that Oriental source from which Mahomet also drew?  But
+he added to the "as it must be" the words, "and as God wills."  He was
+alone in the compartment with Lacey, whose natural garrulity had had a
+severe discipline in the months that had passed since he had asked to be
+allowed to black David's boots.  He could now sit for an hour silent,
+talking to himself, carrying on unheard conversations.  Seeing David's
+mood, he had not spoken twice on this journey, but had made notes in a
+little "Book of Experience,"--as once he had done in Mexico.  At last,
+however, he raised his head, and looked eagerly out of the window as
+David did, and sniffed.
+
+"The Nile again," he said, and smiled.  The attraction of the Nile was
+upon him, as it grows on every one who lives in Egypt.  The Nile and
+Egypt--Egypt and the Nile--its mystery, its greatness, its benevolence,
+its life-giving power, without which Egypt is as the Sahara, it conquers
+the mind of every man at last.
+
+"The Nile, yes," rejoined David, and smiled also.  "We shall cross it
+presently."
+
+Again they relapsed into silence, broken only by the clang, clang of the
+metal on the rails, and then presently another, more hollow sound--the
+engine was upon the bridge.  Lacey got up and put his head out of the
+window.  Suddenly there was a cry of fear and horror over his head, a
+warning voice shrieking:
+
+"The bridge is open--we are lost.  Effendi--master--Allah!"  It was the
+voice of Mahommed Hassan, who had been perched on the roof of the car.
+
+Like lightning Lacey realised the danger, and saw the only way of escape.
+He swung open the door, even as the engine touched the edge of the abyss
+and shrieked its complaint under the hand of the terror-stricken
+driver, caught David's shoulder, and cried: "Jump-jump into the river--
+quick!"
+
+As the engine toppled, David jumped--there was no time to think,
+obedience was the only way.  After him sprang, far down into the grey-
+blue water, Lacey and Mahommed.  When they came again to the surface, the
+little train with its handful of human freight had disappeared.
+
+Two people had seen the train plunge to destruction--the solitary
+horseman whom David had watched kneel upon his sheepskin, and who now
+from a far hill had seen the disaster, but had not seen the three jump
+for their lives, and a fisherman on the bank, who ran shouting towards a
+village standing back from the river.
+
+As the fisherman sped shrieking and beckoning to the villagers, David,
+Lacey, and Mahommed fought for their lives in the swift current, swimming
+at an angle upstream towards the shore; for, as Mahommed warned them,
+there were rocks below.  Lacey was a good swimmer, but he was heavy, and
+David was a better, but Mahommed had proved his merit in the past on many
+an occasion when the laws of the river were reaching out strong hands for
+him.  Now, as Mahommed swam, he kept moaning to himself, cursing his
+father and his father's son, as though he himself were to blame for the
+crime which had been committed.  Here was a plot, and he had discovered
+more plots than one against his master.  The bridge-opener--when he found
+him he would take him into the desert and flay him alive; and find him he
+would.  His watchful eyes were on the hut by the bridge where this man
+should be.  No one was visible.  He cursed the man and all his ancestry
+and all his posterity, sleeping and waking, until the day when he,
+Mahommed, would pinch his flesh with red hot irons.  But now he had other
+and nearer things to occupy him, for in the fierce struggle towards the
+shore Lacey found himself failing, and falling down the stream.
+Presently both Mahommed and David were beside him, Lacey angrily
+protesting to David that he must save himself.
+
+"Say, think of Egypt and all the rest.  You've got to save yourself--let
+me splash along!" he spluttered, breathing hard, his shoulders low in
+the water, his mouth almost submerged.
+
+But David and Mahommed fought along beside him, each determined that it
+must be all or none; and presently the terror-stricken fisherman who had
+roused the village, still shrieking deliriously, came upon them in a
+flat-bottomed boat manned by four stalwart fellaheen, and the tragedy of
+the bridge was over.  But not the tragedy of Achmet the Ropemaker.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+BEYOND THE PALE
+
+Mahommed Hassan had vowed a vow in the river, and he kept it in so far as
+was seemly.  His soul hungered for the face of the bridge-opener, and the
+hunger grew.  He was scarce passed from the shivering Nile into a dry
+yelek, had hardly taken a juicy piece from the cooking-pot at the house
+of the village sheikh, before he began to cultivate friends who could
+help him, including the sheikh himself; for what money Mahommed lacked
+was supplied by Lacey, who had a reasoned confidence in him, and by the
+fiercely indignant Kaid himself, to whom Lacey and Mahommed went
+secretly, hiding their purpose from David.  So, there were a score of
+villages where every sheikh, eager for gold, listened for the whisper of
+the doorways, and every slave and villager listened at the sheikh's door.
+But neither to sheikh nor to villager was it given to find the man.
+
+But one evening there came a knocking at the door of the house which
+Mahommed still kept in the lowest Muslim quarter of the town, a woman who
+hid her face and was of more graceful figure than was familiar in those
+dark purlieus.  The door was at once opened, and Mahommed, with a cry,
+drew her inside.
+
+"Zaida--the peace of God be upon thee," he said, and gazed lovingly yet
+sadly upon her, for she had greatly changed.
+
+"And upon thee peace, Mahommed," she answered, and sat upon the floor,
+her head upon her breast.
+
+"Thou hast trouble  at," he said, and put some cakes of dourha and a
+meated cucumber beside her.  She touched the food with her fingers, but
+did not eat.  "Is thy grief, then, for thy prince who gave himself to the
+lions?" he asked.
+
+"Inshallah!  Harrik is in the bosom of Allah.  He is with Fatima in the
+fields of heaven--was I as Fatima to him?  Nay, the dead have done with
+hurting."
+
+"Since that night thou hast been lost, even since Harrik went.  I
+searched for thee, but thou wert hid.  Surely, thou knewest mine eyes
+were aching and my heart was cast down--did not thou and I feed at the
+same breast?"
+
+"I was dead, and am come forth from the grave; but I shall go again into
+the dark where all shall forget, even I myself; but there is that which I
+would do, which thou must do for me, even as I shall do good to thee,
+that which is the desire of my heart."
+
+"Speak, light of the morning and blessing of thy mother's soul," he said,
+and crowded into his mouth a roll of meat and cucumber.  "Against thy
+feddan shall be set my date-tree; it hath been so ever."
+
+"Listen then, and by the stone of the Kaabah, keep the faith which has
+been throe and mine since my mother, dying, gave me to thy mother, whose
+milk gave me health and, in my youth, beauty--and, in my youth, beauty!"
+Suddenly she buried her face in her veil, and her body shook with sobs
+which had no voice.  Presently she continued: "Listen, and by Abraham and
+Christ and all the Prophets, and by Mahomet the true revealer, give me
+thine aid.  When Harrik gave his life to the lions, I fled to her whom I
+had loved in the house of Kaid--Laka the Syrian, afterwards the wife of
+Achmet Pasha.  By Harrik's death I was free--no more a slave.  Once Laka
+had been the joy of Achmet's heart, but, because she had no child, she
+was despised and forgotten.  Was it not meet I should fly to her whose
+sorrow would hide my loneliness?  And so it was--I was hidden in the
+harem of Achmet.  But miserable tongues--may God wither them!--told
+Achmet of my presence.  And though I was free, and not a bondswoman, he
+broke upon my sleep.  .  .  ."
+
+Mahommed's eyes blazed, his dark skin blackened like a coal, and he
+muttered maledictions between his teeth.  ".  .  .  In the morning there
+was a horror upon me, for which there is no name.  But I laughed also
+when I took a dagger and stole from the harem to find him in the quarters
+beyond the women's gate.  I found him, but I held my hand, for one was
+with him who spake with a tone of anger and of death, and I listened.
+Then, indeed, I rejoiced for thee, for I have found thee a road to honour
+and fortune.  The man was a bridge-opener--" "Ah!--O, light of a thousand
+eyes, fruit of the tree of Eden!" cried Mahommed, and fell on his knees
+at her feet, and would have kissed them, but that, with a cry, she said:
+"Nay, nay, touch me not.  But listen.  .  .  .  Ay, it was Achmet who
+sought to drown thy Pasha in the Nile.  Thou shalt find the man in the
+little street called Singat in the Moosky, at the house of Haleel the
+date-seller."
+
+Mahommed rocked backwards and forwards in his delight.  "Oh, now art thou
+like a lamp of Paradise, even as a star which leadeth an army of stars,
+beloved," he said.  He rubbed his hands together.  "Thy witness and his
+shall send Achmet to a hell of scorpions, and I shall slay the bridge-
+opener with my own hand--hath not the Effendina secretly said so to me,
+knowing that my Pasha, the Inglesi, upon whom be peace for ever and
+forever, would forgive him.  Ah, thou blossom of the tree of trees--"
+
+She rose hastily, and when he would have kissed her hand she drew back to
+the wall.  "Touch me not--nay, then, Mahommed, touch me not--"
+
+"Why should I not pay thee honour, thou princess among women?  Hast thou
+not the brain of a man, and thy beauty, like thy heart, is it not--"
+
+She put out both her hands and spoke sharply.  "Enough, my brother,"
+she said.  "Thou hast thy way to great honour.  Thou shalt yet have a
+thousand feddans of well-watered land and slaves to wait upon thee.  Get
+thee to the house of Haleel.  There shall the blow fall on the head of
+Achmet, the blow which was mine to strike, but that Allah stayed my hand
+that I might do thee and thy Pasha good, and to give the soul-slayer and
+the body-slayer into the hands of Kaid, upon whom be everlasting peace!"
+Her voice dropped low.  "Thou saidst but now that I had beauty.  Is there
+yet any beauty in my face?"  She lowered her yashmak and looked at him
+with burning eyes.
+
+"Thou art altogether beautiful," he answered, "but there is a strangeness
+to thy beauty like none I have seen; as if upon the face of an angel
+there fell a mist--nay, I have not words to make it plain to thee."
+
+With a great sigh, and yet with the tenseness gone from her eyes, she
+slowly drew the veil up again till only her eyes were visible.  "It is
+well," she answered.  "Now, I have heard that to-morrow night Prince Kaid
+will sit in the small court-yard of the blue tiles by the harem to feast
+with his friends, ere the army goes into the desert at the next sunrise.
+Achmet is bidden to the feast."
+
+"It is so, O beloved!"
+
+"There will be dancers and singers to make the feast worthy?"
+
+"At such a time it will be so."
+
+"Then this thou shalt do.  See to it that I shall be among the singers,
+and when all have danced and sung, that I shall sing, and be brought
+before Kaid."
+
+"Inshallah!  It shall be so.  Thou dost desire to see Kaid--in truth,
+thou hast memory, beloved."
+
+She made a gesture of despair.  "Go upon thy business.  Dost thou not
+desire the blood of Achmet and the bridge-opener?"
+
+Mahommed laughed, and joyfully beat his breast, with whispered
+exclamations, and made ready to go.  "And thou?" he asked.
+
+"Am I not welcome here?" she replied wearily.  "O, my sister, thou art
+the master of my life and all that I have," he exclaimed, and a moment
+afterwards he was speeding towards Kaid's Palace.
+
+For the first time since the day of his banishment Achmet the Ropemaker
+was invited to Kaid's Palace.  Coming, he was received with careless
+consideration by the Prince.  Behind his long, harsh face and sullen eyes
+a devil was raging, because of all his plans that had gone awry, and
+because the man he had sought to kill still served the Effendina, putting
+a blight upon Egypt.  To-morrow he, Achmet, must go into the desert with
+the army, and this hated Inglesi would remain behind to have his will
+with Kaid.  The one drop of comfort in his cup was the fact that the
+displeasure of the Effendina against himself was removed, and that he
+had, therefore, his foot once more inside the Palace.  When he came back
+from the war he would win his way to power again.  Meanwhile, he cursed
+the man who had eluded the death he had prepared for him.  With his own
+eyes had he not seen, from the hill top, the train plunge to destruction,
+and had he not once more got off his horse and knelt upon his sheepskin
+and given thanks to Allah--a devout Arab obeying the sunset call to
+prayer, as David had observed from the train?
+
+One by one, two by two, group by group, the unveiled dancers came and
+went; the singers sang behind the screen provided for them, so that none
+might see their faces, after the custom.  At last, however, Kaid and his
+guests grew listless, and smoked and talked idly.  Yet there was in the
+eyes of Kaid a watchfulness unseen by any save a fellah who squatted in a
+corner eating sweetmeats, and a hidden singer waiting until she should be
+called before the Prince Pasha.  The singer's glances continually flashed
+between Kaid and Achmet.  At last, with gleaming eyes, she saw six Nubian
+slaves steal silently behind Achmet.  One, also, of great strength, came
+suddenly and stood before him.  In his hands was a leathern thong.
+
+Achmet saw, felt the presence of the slaves behind him, and shrank back
+numbed and appalled.  A mist came before his eyes; the voice he heard
+summoning him to stand up seemed to come from infinite distances.  The
+hand of doom had fallen like a thunderbolt.  The leathern thong in the
+hands of the slave was the token of instant death.  There was no chance
+of escape.  The Nubians had him at their mercy.  As his brain struggled
+to regain its understanding, he saw, as in a dream, David enter the
+court-yard and come towards Kaid.
+
+Suddenly David stopped in amazement, seeing Achmet.  Inquiringly he
+looked at Kaid, who spoke earnestly to him in a low tone.  Whereupon
+David turned his head away, but after a moment fixed his eyes on Achmet.
+
+Kaid motioned all his startled guests to come nearer.  Then in strong,
+unmerciful voice he laid Achmet's crime before them, and told the story
+of the bridge-opener, who had that day expiated his crime in the desert
+by the hands of Mahommed--but not with torture, as Mahommed had hoped
+might be.
+
+"What shall be his punishment--so foul, so wolfish?" Kaid asked of them
+all.  A dozen voices answered, some one terrible thing, some another.
+
+"Mercy!" moaned Achmet aghast.  "Mercy, Saadat!" he cried to David.
+
+David looked at him calmly.  There was little mercy in his eyes as he
+answered: "Thy crimes sent to their death in the Nile those who never
+injured thee.  Dost thou quarrel with justice?  Compose thy soul, and I
+pray only the Effendina to give thee that seemly death thou didst deny
+thy victims."  He bowed respectfully to Kaid.
+
+Kaid frowned.  "The ways of Egypt are the ways of Egypt, and not of the
+land once thine," he answered shortly.  Then, under the spell of that
+influence which he had never yet been able to resist, he added to the
+slaves: "Take him aside.  I will think upon it.  But he shall die at
+sunrise ere the army goes.  Shall not justice be the gift of Kaid for an
+example and a warning?  Take him away a little.  I will decide."
+
+As Achmet and the slaves disappeared into a dark corner of the court-
+yard, Kaid rose to his feet, and, upon the hint, his guests, murmuring
+praises of his justice and his mercy and his wisdom, slowly melted from
+the court-yard; but once outside they hastened to proclaim in the four
+quarters of Cairo how yet again the English Pasha had picked from the
+Tree of Life an apple of fortune.
+
+The court-yard was now empty, save for the servants of the Prince, David
+and Mahommed, and two officers in whom David had advised Kaid to put
+trust.  Presently one of these officers said: "There is another singer,
+and the last.  Is it the Effendina's pleasure?"
+
+Kaid made a gesture of assent, sat down, and took the stem of a narghileh
+between his lips.  For a moment there was silence, and then, out upon the
+sweet, perfumed night, over which the stars hung brilliant and soft and
+near, a voice at first quietly, then fully, and palpitating with feeling,
+poured forth an Eastern love song:
+
+         "Take thou thy flight, O soul!  Thou hast no more
+          The gladness of the morning!  Ah, the perfumed roses
+          My love laid on my bosom as I slept!
+          How did he wake me with his lips upon mine eyes,
+          How did the singers carol--the singers of my soul
+          That nest among the thoughts of my beloved! .  .  .
+          All silent now, the choruses are gone,
+          The windows of my soul are closed; no more
+          Mine eyes look gladly out to see my lover come.
+          There is no more to do, no more to say:
+          Take flight, my soul, my love returns no more!"
+
+At the first note Kaid started, and his eyes fastened upon the screen
+behind which sat the singer.  Then, as the voice, in sweet anguish,
+filled the court-yard, entrancing them all, rose higher and higher, fell
+and died away, he got to his feet, and called out hoarsely: "Come--come
+forth!"
+
+Slowly a graceful, veiled figure came from behind the great screen.  He
+took a step forward.
+
+"Zaida!  Zaida!" he said gently, amazedly.
+
+She salaamed low.  "Forgive me, O my lord!" she said, in a whispering
+voice, drawing her veil about her head.  "It was my soul's desire to look
+upon thy face once more."
+
+"Whither didst thou go at Harrik's death?  I sent to find thee, and give
+thee safety; but thou wert gone, none knew where."
+
+"O my lord, what was I but a mote in thy sun, that thou shouldst seek
+me?"
+
+Kaid's eyes fell, and he murmured to himself a moment, then he said
+slowly: "Thou didst save Egypt, thou and my friend"--he gestured towards
+David"--and my life also, and all else that is worth.  Therefore bounty,
+and safety, and all thy desires were thy due.  Kaid is no ingrate--no,
+by the hand of Moses that smote at Sinai!"
+
+She made a pathetic motion of her hands.  "By Harrik's death I am free, a
+slave no longer.  O my lord, where I go bounty and famine are the same."
+
+Kaid took a step forward.  "Let me see thy face," he said, something
+strange in her tone moving him with awe.
+
+She lowered her veil and looked him in the eyes.  Her wan beauty smote
+him, conquered him, the exquisite pain in her face filled Kaid's eyes
+with foreboding, and pierced his heart.
+
+"O cursed day that saw thee leave these walls!  I did it for thy good--
+thou wert so young; thy life was all before thee!  But now--come, Zaida,
+here in Kaid's Palace thou shalt have a home, and be at peace, for I see
+that thou hast suffered.  Surely it shall be said that Kaid honours
+thee."  He reached out to take her hand.
+
+She had listened like one in a dream, but, as he was about to touch her,
+she suddenly drew back, veiled her face, save for the eyes, and said in a
+voice of agony: "Unclean, unclean!  My lord, I am a leper!"
+
+An awed and awful silence fell upon them all.  Kaid drew back as though
+smitten by a blow.
+
+Presently, upon the silence, her voice sharp with agony said: "I am a
+leper, and I go to that desert place which my lord has set apart for
+lepers, where, dead to the world, I shall watch the dreadful years come
+and go.  Behold, I would die, but that I have a sister there these many
+years, and her sick soul lives in loneliness.  O my lord, forgive me!
+Here was I happy; here of old I did sing to thee, and I came to sing to
+thee once more a death-song.  Also, I came to see thee do justice, ere I
+went from thy face for ever."
+
+Kaid's head was lowered on his breast.  He shuddered.  "Thou art so
+beautiful--thy voice, all!  Thou wouldst see justice--speak!  Justice
+shall be made plain before thee."
+
+Twice she essayed to speak, and could not; but from his sweetmeats and
+the shadows Mahommed crept forward, kissed the ground before Kaid, and
+said: "Effendina, thou knowest me as the servant of thy high servant,
+Claridge Pasha."
+
+"I know thee--proceed."
+
+"Behold, she whom God has smitten, man smote first.  I am her foster-
+brother--from the same breast we drew the food of life.  Thou wouldst do
+justice, O Effendina; but canst thou do double justice--ay, a
+thousandfold?  Then"--his voice raised almost shrilly--"then do it upon
+Achmet Pasha.  She--Zaida--told me where I should find the bridge-
+opener."
+
+"Zaida once more!" Kaid murmured.
+
+"She had learned all in Achmet's harem--hearing speech between Achmet and
+the man whom thou didst deliver to my hands yesterday."
+
+"Zaida-in Achmet's harem?" Kaid turned upon her.
+
+Swiftly she told her dreadful tale, how, after Achmet had murdered all of
+her except her body, she rose up to kill herself; but fainting, fell upon
+a burning brazier, and her hand thrust accidentally in the live coals
+felt no pain.  "And behold, O my lord, I knew I was a leper; and I
+remembered my sister and lived on."  So she ended, in a voice numbed and
+tuneless.
+
+Kaid trembled with rage, and he cried in a loud voice: "Bring Achmet
+forth."
+
+As the slave sped upon the errand, David laid a hand on Kaid's arm, and
+whispered to him earnestly.  Kaid's savage frown cleared away, and his
+rage calmed down; but an inflexible look came into his face, a look which
+petrified the ruined Achmet as he salaamed before him.
+
+"Know thy punishment, son of a dog with a dog's heart, and prepare for a
+daily death," said Kaid.  "This woman thou didst so foully wrong, even
+when thou didst wrong her, she was a leper."
+
+A low cry broke from Achmet, for now when death came he must go unclean
+to the after-world, forbidden Allah's presence.  Broken and abject he
+listened.
+
+"She knew not, till thou wert gone," continued Kaid.  She is innocent
+before the law.  But thou--beast of the slime--hear thy sentence.  There
+is in the far desert a place where lepers live.  There, once a year, one
+caravan comes, and, at the outskirts of the place unclean, leaves food
+and needful things for another year, and returns again to Egypt after
+many days.  From that place there is no escape--the desert is as the sea,
+and upon that sea there is no ghiassa to sail to a farther shore.  It is
+the leper land.  Thither thou shalt go to wait upon this woman thou hast
+savagely wronged, and upon her kind, till thou diest.  It shall be so."
+
+"Mercy! Mercy!" Achmet cried, horror-stricken, and turned to David.
+"Thou art merciful.  Speak for me, Saadat."
+
+"When didst thou have mercy?" asked David.  "Thy crimes are against
+humanity."
+
+Kaid made a motion, and, with dragging feet, Achmet passed from the
+haunts of familiar faces.
+
+For a moment Kaid stood and looked at Zaida, rigid and stricken in that
+awful isolation which is the leper's doom.  Her eyes were closed, but her
+head was high.  "Wilt thou not die?" Kaid asked her gently.
+
+She shook her head slowly, and her hands folded on her breast.  "My
+sister is there," she said at last.  There was an instant's stillness,
+then Kaid added with a voice of grief: "Peace be upon thee, Zaida.  Life
+is but a spark.  If death comes not to-day, it will tomorrow, for thee--
+for me.  Inshallah, peace be upon thee!"
+
+She opened her eyes and looked at him.  Seeing what was in his face, they
+lighted with a great light for a moment.
+
+"And upon thee peace, O my lord, for ever and for ever!" she said
+softly, and, turning, left the court-yard, followed at a distance by
+Mahommed Hassan.
+
+Kaid remained motionless looking after her.
+
+David broke in on his abstraction.  "The army at sunrise--thou wilt speak
+to it, Effendina?"
+
+Kaid roused himself.  "What shall I say?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"Tell them they shall be clothed and fed, and to every man or his family
+three hundred piastres at the end."
+
+"Who will do this?" asked Kaid incredulously.  "Thou, Effendina--Egypt
+and thou and I."
+
+"So be it," answered Kaid.
+
+As they left the court-yard, he said suddenly to an officer behind him:
+
+"The caravan to the Place of Lepers--add to the stores fifty camel-loads
+this year, and each year hereafter.  Have heed to it.  Ere it starts,
+come to me.  I would see all with mine own eyes."
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Begin to see how near good is to evil
+But the years go on, and friends have an end
+Does any human being know what he can bear of temptation
+Heaven where wives without number awaited him
+Honesty was a thing he greatly desired--in others
+How little we can know to-day what we shall feel tomorrow
+How many conquests have been made in the name of God
+One does the work and another gets paid
+To-morrow is no man's gift
+We want every land to do as we do; and we want to make 'em do it
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WEAVERS
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+
+XV.       SOOLSBY'S HAND UPON THE CURTAIN
+XVI.      THE DEBT AND THE ACCOUNTING
+XVII.     THE WOMAN OF THE CROSS-ROADS
+XVIII.    TIME, THE IDOL-BREAKER
+XIX.      SHARPER THAN A SWORD
+XX.       EACH AFTER HIS OWN ORDER
+XXI.      "THERE IS NOTHING HIDDEN WHICH SHALL NOT BE REVEALED"
+XXII.     AS IN A GLASS DARKLY
+XXIII.    THE TENTS OF CUSHAN
+XXIV.     THE QUESTIONER
+XXV.      THE VOICE THROUGH THE DOOR
+XXVI.     "I OWE YOU NOTHING"
+XXVII.    THE AWAKENING
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+SOOLSBY'S HAND UPON THE CURTAIN
+
+Faith raised her eyes from the paper before her and poised her head
+meditatively.
+
+"How long is it, friend, since--"
+
+"Since he went to Egypt?"
+
+"Nay, since thee--"
+
+"Since I went to Mass?" he grumbled humorously.
+
+She laughed whimsically.  "Nay, then, since thee made the promise--"
+
+"That I would drink no more till his return--ay, that was my bargain;
+till then and no longer!  I am not to be held back then, unless I change
+my mind when I see him.  Well, 'tis three years since--"
+
+"Three years!  Time hasn't flown.  Is it not like an old memory, his
+living here in this house, Soolsby, and all that happened then?"
+
+Soolsby looked at her over his glasses, resting his chin on the back of
+the chair he was caning, and his lips worked in and out with a suppressed
+smile.
+
+"Time's got naught to do with you.  He's afeard of you," he continued.
+"He lets you be."
+
+"Friend, thee knows I am almost an old woman now."  She made marks
+abstractedly upon the corner of a piece of paper.  "Unless my hair turns
+grey presently I must bleach it, for 'twill seem improper it should
+remain so brown."
+
+She smoothed it back with her hand.  Try as she would to keep it trim
+after the manner of her people, it still waved loosely on her forehead
+and over her ears.  And the grey bonnet she wore but added piquancy to
+its luxuriance, gave a sweet gravity to the demure beauty of the face it
+sheltered.
+
+"I am thirty now," she murmured, with a sigh, and went on writing.
+
+The old man's fingers moved quickly among the strips of cane, and, after
+a silence, without raising his head, he said: "Thirty, it means naught."
+
+"To those without understanding," she rejoined drily.
+
+"'Tis tough understanding why there's no wedding-ring on yonder finger.
+There's been many a man that's wanted it, that's true--the Squire's son
+from Bridgley, the lord of Axwood Manor, the long soldier from Shipley
+Wood, and doctors, and such folk aplenty.  There's where understanding
+fails."
+
+Faith's face flushed, then it became pale, and her eyes, suffused,
+dropped upon the paper before her.  At first it seemed as though she must
+resent his boldness; but she had made a friend of him these years past,
+and she knew he meant no rudeness.  In the past they had talked of things
+deeper and more intimate still.  Yet there was that in his words which
+touched a sensitive corner of her nature.
+
+"Why should I be marrying?" she asked presently.  "There was my sister's
+son all those years.  I had to care for him."
+
+"Ay, older than him by a thimbleful!" he rejoined.
+
+"Nay, till he came to live in this hut alone older by many a year.  Since
+then he is older than me by fifty.  I had not thought of marriage before
+he went away.  Squire's son, soldier, or pillman, what were they to me!
+He needed me.  They came, did they?  Well, and if they came?"
+
+"And since the Egyptian went?"
+
+A sort of sob came into her throat.  "He does not need me, but he may--he
+will one day; and then I shall be ready.  But now--"
+
+Old Soolsby's face turned away.  His house overlooked every house in the
+valley beneath: he could see nearly every garden; he could even recognise
+many in the far streets.  Besides, there hung along two nails on the wall
+a telescope, relic of days when he sailed the main.  The grounds of the
+Cloistered House and the fruit-decked garden-wall of the Red Mansion were
+ever within his vision.  Once, twice, thrice, he had seen what he had
+seen, and dark feelings, harsh emotions, had been roused in him.
+
+"He will need us both--the Egyptian will need us both one day," he
+answered now; "you more than any, me because I can help him, too--ay,
+I can help him.  But married or single you could help him; so why waste
+your days here?"
+
+"Is it wasting my days to stay with my father?  He is lonely, most lonely
+since our Davy went away; and troubled, too, for the dangers of that life
+yonder.  His voice used to shake when he prayed, in those days when Davy
+was away in the desert, down at Darfur and elsewhere among the rebel
+tribes.  He frightened me then, he was so stern and still.  Ah, but that
+day when we knew he was safe, I was eighteen, and no more!" she added,
+smiling.  "But, think you, I could marry while my life is so tied to him
+and to our Egyptian?"
+
+No one looking at her limpid, shining blue eyes but would have set her
+down for twenty-three or twenty-four, for not a line showed on her smooth
+face; she was exquisite of limb and feature, and had the lissomeness of a
+girl of fifteen.  There was in her eyes, however, an unquiet sadness; she
+had abstracted moments when her mind seemed fixed on some vexing problem.
+Such a mood suddenly came upon her now.  The pen lay by the paper
+untouched, her hands folded in her lap, and a long silence fell upon
+them, broken only by the twanging of the strips of cane in Soolsby's
+hands.  At last, however, even this sound ceased; and the two scarce
+moved as the sun drew towards the middle afternoon.  At last they were
+roused by the sound of a horn, and, looking down, they saw a four-in-hand
+drawing smartly down the road to the village over the gorse-spread
+common, till it stopped at the Cloistered House.  As Faith looked, her
+face slightly flushed.  She bent forward till she saw one figure get down
+and, waving a hand to the party on the coach as it moved on, disappear
+into the gateway of the Cloistered House.
+
+"What is the office they have given him?" asked Soolsby, disapproval in
+his tone, his eyes fixed on the disappearing figure.
+
+"They have made Lord Eglington Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs," she
+answered.
+
+"And what means that to a common mind?"
+
+"That what his Government does in Egypt will mean good or bad to our
+Egyptian," she returned.
+
+"That he can do our man good or ill?" Soolsby asked sharply--"that he,
+yonder, can do that?"
+
+She inclined her head.
+
+"When I see him doing ill--well, when I see him doing that"--he snatched
+up a piece of wood from the floor--"then I will break him, so!"
+
+He snapped the stick across his knee, and threw the pieces on the ground.
+He was excited.  He got to his feet and walked up and down the little
+room, his lips shut tight, his round eyes flaring.
+
+Faith watched him in astonishment.  In the past she had seen his face
+cloud over, his eyes grow sulky, at the mention of Lord Eglington's name;
+she knew that Soolsby hated him; but his aversion now was more definite
+and violent than he had before shown, save on that night long ago when
+David went first to Egypt, and she had heard hard words between them in
+this same hut.  She supposed it one of those antipathies which often grow
+in inverse ratio to the social position of those concerned.  She replied
+in a soothing voice:
+
+"Then we shall hope that he will do our Davy only good."
+
+"You would not wish me to break his lordship?  You would not wish it?"
+He came over to her, and looked sharply at her.  "You would not wish it?"
+he repeated meaningly.
+
+She evaded his question.  "Lord Eglington will be a great man one day
+perhaps," she answered.  "He has made his way quickly.  How high he has
+climbed in three years--how high!"
+
+Soolsby's anger was not lessened.  "Pooh!  Pooh!  He is an Earl.  An Earl
+has all with him at the start--name, place, and all.  But look at our
+Egyptian!  Look at Egyptian David--what had he but his head and an honest
+mind?  What is he?  He is the great man of Egypt.  Tell me, who helped
+Egyptian David?  That second-best lordship yonder, he crept about coaxing
+this one and wheedling that.  I know him--I know him.  He wheedles and
+wheedles.  No matter whether 'tis a babe or an old woman, he'll talk, and
+talk, and talk, till they believe in him, poor folks!  No one's too small
+for his net.  There's Martha Higham yonder.  She's forty five.  If he
+sees her, as sure as eggs he'll make love to her, and fill her ears with
+words she'd never heard before, and 'd never hear at all if not from him.
+Ay, there's no man too sour and no woman too old that he'll not blandish,
+if he gets the chance."
+
+As he spoke Faith shut her eyes, and her fingers clasped tightly
+together--beautiful long, tapering fingers, like those in Romney's
+pictures.  When he stopped, her eyes opened slowly, and she gazed before
+her down towards that garden by the Red Mansion where her lifetime had
+been spent.
+
+"Thee says hard words, Soolsby," she rejoined gently.  "But maybe thee is
+right."  Then a flash of humour passed over her face.  "Suppose we ask
+Martha Higham if the Earl has 'blandished' her.  If the Earl has
+blandished Martha, he is the very captain of deceit.  Why, he has himself
+but twenty-eight years.  Will a man speak so to one older than himself,
+save in mockery?  So, if thee is right in this, then--then if he speak
+well to deceive and to serve his turn, he will also speak ill; and he
+will do ill when it may serve his turn; and so he may do our Davy ill,
+as thee says, Soolsby."
+
+She rose to her feet and made as if to go, but she kept her face from
+him.  Presently, however, she turned and looked at him.  "If he does ill
+to Davy, there will be those like thee, Soolsby, who will not spare him."
+
+His fingers opened and shut maliciously, he nodded dour assent.  After an
+instant, while he watched her, she added: "Thee has not heard my lord is
+to marry?"
+
+"Marry--who is the blind lass?"
+
+"Her name is Maryon, Miss Hylda Maryon: and she has a great fortune.  But
+within a month it is to be."
+
+"Thee remembers the woman of the cross-roads, her that our Davy--"
+
+"Her the Egyptian kissed, and put his watch in her belt--ay,
+Kate Heaver!"
+
+"She is now maid to her Lord Eglington will wed.  She is to spend
+to-night with us."
+
+"Where is her lad that was, that the Egyptian rolled like dough in a
+trough?"
+
+"Jasper Kimber?  He is at Sheffield.  He has been up and down, now sober
+for a year, now drunken for a month, now in, now out of a place, until
+this past year.  But for this whole year he has been sober, and he may
+keep his pledge.  He is working in the trades-unions.  Among his fellow-
+workers he is called a politician--if loud speaking and boasting can make
+one.  Yet if these doings give him stimulant instead of drink, who shall
+complain?"
+
+Soolsby's head was down.  He was looking out over the far hills, while
+the strips of cane were idle in his hands.  "Ay, 'tis true--'tis true,"
+he nodded.  "Give a man an idee which keeps him cogitating, makes him
+think he's greater than he is, and sets his pulses beating, why, that's
+the cure to drink.  Drink is friendship and good company and big thoughts
+while it lasts; and it's lonely without it, if you've been used to it.
+Ay, but Kimber's way is best.  Get an idee in your noddle, to do a thing
+that's more to you than work or food or bed, and 'twill be more than
+drink, too."
+
+He nodded to himself, then began weaving the strips of cane furiously.
+Presently he stopped again, and threw his head back with a chuckle.
+"Now, wouldn't it be a joke, a reg'lar first-class joke, if Kimber and
+me both had the same idee, if we was both workin' for the same thing--
+an' didn't know it?  I reckon it might be so."
+
+"What end is thee working for, friend?  If the public prints speak true,
+Kimber is working to stand for Parliament against Lord Eglington."
+
+Soolsby grunted and laughed in his throat.  "Now, is that the game of
+Mister Kimber?  Against my Lord Eglington!  Hey, but that's a joke, my
+lord!"
+
+"And what is thee working for, Soolsby?"
+
+"What do I be working for?  To get the Egyptian back to England--what
+else?"
+
+"That is no joke."
+
+"Ay, but 'tis a joke."  The old man chuckled.  "'Tis the best joke in the
+boilin'."  He shook his head and moved his body backwards and forwards
+with glee.  "Me and Kimber!  Me and Kimber!" he roared, "and neither of
+us drunk for a year--not drunk for a whole year.  Me and Kimber--and
+him!"
+
+Faith put her hand on his shoulder.  "Indeed, I see no joke, but only
+that which makes my heart thankful, Soolsby."
+
+"Ay, you will be thankful, you will be thankful, by-and-by," he said,
+still chuckling, and stood up respectfully to show her out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE DEBT AND THE ACCOUNTING
+
+His forehead frowning, but his eyes full of friendliness, Soolsby watched
+Faith go down the hillside and until she reached the main road.  Here,
+instead of going to the Red Mansion, she hesitated a moment, and then
+passed along a wooded path leading to the Meetinghouse, and the
+graveyard.  It was a perfect day of early summer, the gorse was in full
+bloom, and the may and the hawthorn were alive with colour.  The path she
+had taken led through a narrow lane, overhung with blossoms and greenery.
+By bearing away to the left into another path, and making a detour, she
+could reach the Meeting-house through a narrow lane leading past a now
+disused mill and a small, strong stream flowing from the hill above.
+
+As she came down the hill, other eyes than Soolsby's watched her.  From
+his laboratory--the laboratory in which his father had worked, in which
+he had lost his life--Eglington had seen the trim, graceful figure.  He
+watched it till it moved into the wooded path.  Then he left his garden,
+and, moving across a field, came into the path ahead of her.  Walking
+swiftly, he reached the old mill, and waited.
+
+She came slowly, now and again stooping to pick a flower and place it in
+her belt.  Her bonnet was slung on her arm, her hair had broken a little
+loose and made a sort of hood round the face, so still, so composed, into
+which the light of steady, soft, apprehending eyes threw a gentle
+radiance.  It was a face to haunt a man when the storm of life was round
+him.  It had, too, a courage which might easily become a delicate
+stubbornness, a sense of duty which might become sternness, if roused by
+a sense of wrong to herself or others.
+
+She reached the mill and stood and listened towards the stream and the
+waterfall.  She came here often.  The scene quieted her in moods of
+restlessness which came from a feeling that her mission was interrupted,
+that half her life's work had been suddenly taken from her.  When David
+went, her life had seemed to shrivel; for with him she had developed as
+he had developed; and when her busy care of him was withdrawn, she had
+felt a sort of paralysis which, in a sense, had never left her.  Then
+suitors had come--the soldier from Shipley Wood, the lord of Axwood
+Manor, and others, and, in a way, a new sense was born in her, though she
+was alive to the fact that the fifteen thousand pounds inherited from her
+Uncle Benn had served to warm the air about her into a wider circle.  Yet
+it was neither to soldier, nor squire, nor civil engineer, nor surgeon
+that the new sense stirring in her was due.  The spring was too far
+beneath to be found by them.
+
+When, at last, she raised her head, Lord Eglington was in the path,
+looking at her with a half-smile.  She did not start, but her face turned
+white, and a mist came before her eyes.
+
+Quickly, however, as though fearful lest he should think he could trouble
+her composure, she laid a hand upon herself.
+
+He came near to her and held out his hand.  "It has been a long six
+months since we met here," he said.
+
+She made no motion to take his hand.  "I find days grow shorter as I grow
+older," she rejoined steadily, and smoothed her hair with her hand,
+making ready to put on her bonnet.
+
+"Ah, do not put it on," he urged quickly, with a gesture.  "It becomes
+you so--on your arm."
+
+She had regained her self-possession.  Pride, the best weapon of a woman,
+the best tonic, came to her resource.  "Thee loves to please thee at any
+cost," she replied.  She fastened the grey strings beneath her chin.
+
+"Would it be costly to keep the bonnet on your arm?"
+
+"It is my pleasure to have it on my head, and my pleasure has some value
+to myself."
+
+"A moment ago," he rejoined laughing, "it was your pleasure to have it on
+your arm."
+
+"Are all to be monotonous except Lord Eglington?  Is he to have the only
+patent of change?"
+
+"Do I change?"  He smiled at her with a sense of inquisition, with an air
+that seemed to say, "I have lifted the veil of this woman's heart; I am
+the master of the situation."
+
+She did not answer to the obvious meaning of his words, but said:
+
+"Thee has done little else but change, so far as eye can see.  Thee and
+thy family were once of Quaker faith, but thee is a High Churchman now.
+Yet they said a year ago thee was a sceptic or an infidel."
+
+"There is force in what you say," he replied.  "I have an inquiring mind;
+I am ever open to reason.  Confucius said: 'It is only the supremely wise
+or the deeply ignorant who never alter.'"
+
+"Thee has changed politics.  Thee made a 'sensation, but that was not
+enough.  Thee that was a rebel became a deserter."
+
+He laughed.  "Ah, I was open to conviction!  I took my life in my hands,
+defied consequences."  He laughed again.
+
+"It brought office."
+
+"I am Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs," he murmured complacently.
+
+"Change is a policy with thee, I think.  It has paid thee well, so it
+would seem."
+
+"Only a fair rate of interest for the capital invested and the risks I've
+taken," he answered with an amused look.
+
+"I do not think that interest will increase.  Thee has climbed quickly,
+but fast climbing is not always safe climbing."
+
+His mood changed.  His voice quickened, his face lowered.  "You think I
+will fail?  You wish me to fail?"
+
+"In so far as thee acts uprightly, I wish thee well.  But if, out of
+office, thee disregards justice and conscience and the rights of others,
+can thee be just and faithful in office?  Subtlety will not always avail.
+The strong man takes the straight course.  Subtlety is not intellect."
+
+He flushed.  She had gone to the weakest point in his defences.  His
+vanity was being hurt.  She had an advantage now.
+
+"You are wrong," he protested.  "You do not understand public life, here
+in a silly Quaker village."
+
+"Does thee think that all that happens in 'public life' is of
+consequence?  That is not sensible.  Thee is in the midst of a thousand
+immaterial things, though they have importance for the moment.  But the
+chief things that matter to all, does thee not know that a 'silly Quaker
+village' may realise them to the full--more fully because we see them
+apart from the thousand little things that do not matter?  I remember a
+thing in political life that mattered.  It was at Heddington after the
+massacre at Damascus.  Does thee think that we did not know thee spoke
+without principle then, and only to draw notice?"
+
+"You would make me into a demagogue," he said irritably.
+
+"Thee is a demagogue," she answered candidly.
+
+"Why did you never say all this to me long ago?  Years have passed since
+then, and since then you and I have--have been friends.  You have--"
+
+He paused, for she made a protesting motion, and a fire sprang into her
+eyes.  Her voice got colder.  "Thee made me believe--ah, how many times
+did we speak together?  Six times it was, not more.  Thee made me believe
+that what I thought or said helped thee to see things better.  Thee said
+I saw things truly like a child, with the wisdom of a woman.  Thee
+remembers that?"
+
+"It was so," he put in hastily.
+
+"No, not for a moment so, though I was blinded to think for an instant
+that it was.  Thee subtly took the one way which could have made me
+listen to thee.  Thee wanted help, thee said; and if a word of mine could
+help thee now and then, should I withhold it, so long as I thought thee
+honest?"
+
+"Do you think I was not honest in wanting your friendship?"
+
+"Nay, it was not friendship thee wanted, for friendship means a giving
+and a getting.  Thee was bent on getting what was, indeed, of but little
+value save to the giver; but thee gave nothing; thee remembered nothing
+of what was given thee."
+
+"It is not so, it is not so," he urged eagerly, nervously.  "I gave, and
+I still give."
+
+"In those old days, I did not understand," she went on, "what it was thee
+wanted.  I know now.  It was to know the heart and mind of a woman--of a
+woman older than thee.  So that thee should have such sort of experience,
+though I was but a foolish choice of the experiment.  They say thee has a
+gift for chemistry like thy father; but if thee experiments no more
+wisely in the laboratory than with me, thee will not reach distinction."
+
+"Your father hated my father and did not believe in him, I know not why,
+and you are now hating and disbelieving me."
+
+"I do not know why my father held the late Earl in abhorrence; I know he
+has no faith in thee; and I did ill in listening to thee, in believing
+for one moment there was truth in thee.  But no, no, I think I never
+believed it.  I think that even when thee said most, at heart I believed
+least."
+
+"You doubt that?  You doubt all I said to you?" he urged softly, coming
+close to her.
+
+She drew aside slightly.  She had steeled herself for this inevitable
+interview, and there was no weakening of her defences; but a great
+sadness came into her eyes, and spread over her face, and to this was
+added, after a moment, a pity which showed the distance she was from him,
+the safety in which she stood.
+
+"I remember that the garden was beautiful, and that thee spoke as though
+thee was part of the garden.  Thee remembers that, at our meeting in the
+Cloistered House, when the woman was ill, I had no faith in thee; but
+thee spoke with grace, and turned common things round about, so that they
+seemed different to the ear from any past hearing; and I listened.  I did
+not know, and I do not know now, why it is my duty to shun any of thy
+name, and above all thyself; but it has been so commanded by my father
+all my life; and though what he says may be in a little wrong, in much it
+must ever be right."
+
+"And so, from a hatred handed down, your mind has been tuned to shun even
+when your heart was learning to give me a home--Faith?"
+
+She straightened herself.  "Friend, thee will do me the courtesy to
+forget to use my Christian name.  I am not a child-indeed, I am well on
+in years"--he smiled--"and thee has no friendship or kinship for warrant.
+If my mind was tuned to shun thee, I gave proof that it was willing to
+take thee at thine own worth, even against the will of my father, against
+the desire of David, who knew thee better than I--he gauged thee at first
+glance."
+
+"You have become a philosopher and a statesman," he said ironically.
+"Has your nephew, the new Joseph in Egypt, been giving you instructions
+in high politics?  Has he been writing the Epistles of David to the
+Quakers?"
+
+"Thee will leave his name apart," she answered with dignity.  "I have
+studied neither high politics nor statesmanship, though in the days when
+thee did flatter me thee said I had a gift for such things.  Thee did not
+speak the truth.  And now I will say that I do not respect thee.  No
+matter how high thee may climb, still I shall not respect thee; for thee
+will ever gain ends by flattery, by subtlety, and by using every man and
+every woman for selfish ends.  Thee cannot be true-not even to that which
+by nature is greatest in thee.".
+
+He withered under her words.
+
+"And what is greatest in me?" he asked abruptly, his coolness and self-
+possession striving to hold their own.
+
+"That which will ruin thee in the end."  Her eyes looked beyond his into
+the distance, rapt and shining; she seemed scarcely aware of his
+presence.  "That which will bring thee down--thy hungry spirit of
+discovery.  It will serve thee no better than it served the late Earl.
+But thee it will lead into paths ending in a gulf of darkness."
+
+"Deborah!" he answered, with a rasping laugh.  "Continuez!  Forewarned
+is forearmed."
+
+"No, do not think I shall be glad," she answered, still like one in a
+dream.  "I shall lament it as I lament--as I lament now.  All else fades
+away into the end which I see for thee.  Thee will live alone without a
+near and true friend, and thee will die alone, never having had a true
+friend.  Thee will never be a true friend, thee will never love truly man
+or woman, and thee will never find man or woman who will love thee truly,
+or will be with thee to aid thee in the dark and falling days."
+
+"Then," he broke in sharply, querulously, "then, I will stand alone.
+I shall never come whining that I have been ill-used, to fate or fortune,
+to men or to the Almighty."
+
+"That I believe.  Pride will build up in thee a strength which will be
+like water in the end.  Oh, my lord," she added, with a sudden change in
+her voice and manner, "if thee could only be true--thee who never has
+been true to any one!"
+
+"Why does a woman always judge a man after her own personal experience
+with him, or what she thinks is her own personal experience?"
+
+A robin hopped upon the path before her.  She watched it for a moment
+intently, then lifted her head as the sound of a bell came through the
+wood to her.  She looked up at the sun, which was slanting towards
+evening.  She seemed about to speak, but with second thought, moved on
+slowly past the mill and towards the Meeting-house.  He stepped on beside
+her.  She kept her eyes fixed in front of her, as though oblivious of his
+presence.
+
+"You shall hear me speak.  You shall listen to what I have to say, though
+it is for the last time," he urged stubbornly.  "You think ill of me.
+Are you sure you are not pharisaical?"
+
+"I am honest enough to say that which hurts me in the saying.  I do not
+forget that to believe thee what I think is to take all truth from what
+thee said to me last year, and again this spring when the tulips first
+came and there was good news from Egypt."
+
+"I said," he rejoined boldly, "that I was happier with you than with any
+one else alive.  I said that what you thought of me meant more to me than
+what any one else in the world thought; and that I say now, and will
+always say it."
+
+The old look of pity came into her face.  "I am older than thee by two
+years," she answered quaintly, "and I know more of real life, though I
+have lived always here.  I have made the most of the little I have seen;
+thee has made little of the much that thee has seen.  Thee does not know
+the truth concerning thee.  Is it not, in truth, vanity which would have
+me believe in thee?  If thee was happier with me than with any one alive,
+why then did thee make choice of a wife even in the days thee was
+speaking to me as no man shall ever speak again?  Nothing can explain
+so base a fact.  No, no, no, thee said to me what thee said to others,
+and will say again without shame.  But--but see, I will forgive; yes, I
+will follow thee with good wishes, if thee will promise to help David,
+whom thee has ever disliked, as, in the place held by thee, thee can do
+now.  Will thee offer this one proof, in spite of all else that
+disproves, that thee spoke any words of truth to me in the Cloistered
+House, in the garden by my father's house, by yonder mill, and hard by
+the Meeting-house yonder-near to my sister's grave by the willow-tree?
+Will thee do that for me?"
+
+He was about to reply, when there appeared in the path before them Luke
+Claridge.  His back was upon them, but he heard their footsteps and swung
+round.  As though turned to stone, he waited for them.  As they
+approached, his lips, dry and pale, essayed to speak, but no sound came.
+A fire was in his eyes which boded no good.  Amazement, horror, deadly
+anger, were all there, but, after a moment, the will behind the tumult
+commanded it, the wild light died away, and he stood calm and still
+awaiting them.  Faith was as pale as when she had met Eglington.  As she
+came nearer, Luke Claridge said, in a low voice:
+
+"How do I find thee in this company, Faith?"  There was reproach
+unutterable in his voice, in his face.  He seemed humiliated and shamed,
+though all the while a violent spirit in him was struggling for the
+mastery.
+
+"As I came this way to visit my sister's grave I met my lord by the mill.
+He spoke to me, and, as I wished a favour of him, I walked with him
+thither--but a little way.  I was going to visit my sister's grave."
+
+"Thy sister's grave!"  The fire flamed up again, but the masterful will
+chilled it down, and he answered: "What secret business can thee have
+with any of that name which I have cast out of knowledge or notice?"
+
+Ignorant as he was of the old man's cause for quarrel or dislike,
+Eglington felt himself aggrieved, and, therefore, with an advantage.
+
+"You had differences with my father, sir," he said.  "I do not know what
+they were, but they lasted his lifetime, and all my life you have treated
+me with aversion.  I am not a pestilence.  I have never wronged you.
+I have lived your peaceful neighbour under great provocation, for your
+treatment would have done me harm if my place were less secure.  I think
+I have cause for complaint."
+
+"I have never acted in haste concerning thee, or those who went before
+thee.  What business had thee with him, Faith?" he asked again.  His
+voice was dry and hard.
+
+Her impulse was to tell the truth, and so for ever have her conscience
+clear, for there would never be any more need for secrecy.  The wheel of
+understanding between Eglington and herself had come full circle, and
+there was an end.  But to tell the truth would be to wound her father, to
+vex him against Eglington even as he had never yet been vexed.  Besides,
+it was hard, while Eglington was there, to tell what, after all, was the
+sole affair of her own life.  In one literal sense, Eglington was not
+guilty of deceit.  Never in so many words had he said to her: "I love
+you;" never had he made any promise to her or exacted one; he had done no
+more than lure her to feel one thing, and then to call it another thing.
+Also there was no direct and vital injury, for she had never loved him;
+though how far she had travelled towards that land of light and trial she
+could never now declare.  These thoughts flashed through her mind as she
+stood looking at her father.  Her tongue seemed imprisoned, yet her soft
+and candid eyes conquered the austerity in the old man's gaze.
+
+Eglington spoke for her.
+
+"Permit me to answer, neighbour," he said.  "I wished to speak with
+your daughter, because I am to be married soon, and my wife will, at
+intervals, come here to live.  I wished that she should not be shunned
+by you and yours as I have been.  She would not understand, as I do not.
+Yours is a constant call to war, while all your religion is an appeal for
+peace.  I wished to ask your daughter to influence you to make it
+possible for me and mine to live in friendship among you.  My wife will
+have some claims upon you.  Her mother was an American, of a Quaker
+family from Derbyshire.  She has done nothing to merit your aversion."
+
+Faith listened astonished and baffled.  Nothing of this had he said to
+her.  Had he meant to say it to her?  Had it been in his mind?  Or was it
+only a swift adaptation to circumstances, an adroit means of working upon
+the sympathies of her father, who, she could see, was in a quandary?
+Eglington had indeed touched the old man as he had not been touched in
+thirty years and more by one of his name.  For a moment the insinuating
+quality of the appeal submerged the fixed idea in a mind to which the
+name of Eglington was anathema.
+
+Eglington saw his advantage.  He had felt his way carefully, and he
+pursued it quickly.  "For the rest, your daughter asked what I was ready
+to offer--such help as, in my new official position, I can give to
+Claridge Pasha in Egypt.  As a neighbour, as Minister in the Government,
+I will do what I can to aid him."
+
+Silent and embarrassed, the old man tried to find his way.  Presently he
+said tentatively: "David Claridge has a title to the esteem of all
+civilised people."  Eglington was quick with his reply.  "If he succeeds,
+his title will become a concrete fact.  There is no honour the Crown
+would not confer for such remarkable service."
+
+The other's face darkened.  "I did not speak, I did not think, of handles
+to his name.  I find no good in them, but only means for deceiving and
+deluding the world.  Such honours as might make him baronet, or duke,
+would add not a cubit to his stature.  If he had such a thing by right"
+--his voice hardened, his eyes grew angry once again--"I would wish it
+sunk into the sea."
+
+"You are hard on us, sir, who did not give ourselves our titles, but took
+them with our birth as a matter of course.  There was nothing inspiring
+in them.  We became at once distinguished and respectable by patent."
+
+He laughed good-humouredly.  Then suddenly he changed, and his eyes took
+on a far-off look which Faith had seen so often in the eyes of David,
+but in David's more intense and meaning, and so different.  With what
+deftness and diplomacy had he worked upon her father!  He had crossed a
+stream which seemed impassable by adroit, insincere diplomacy.
+
+She saw that it was time to go, while yet Eglington's disparagement of
+rank and aristocracy was ringing in the old man's ears; though she knew
+there was nothing in Eglington's equipment he valued more than his title
+and the place it gave him.  Grateful, however, for his successful
+intervention, Faith now held out her hand.
+
+"I must take my father away, or it will be sunset before we reach the
+Meeting-house," she said.  "Goodbye-friend," she added gently.
+
+For an instant Luke Claridge stared at her, scarce comprehending that his
+movements were being directed by any one save himself.  Truth was, Faith
+had come to her cross-roads in life.  For the first time in her memory
+she had seen her father speak to an Eglington without harshness; and, as
+he weakened for a moment, she moved to take command of that weakness,
+though she meant it to seem like leading.  While loving her and David
+profoundly, her father had ever been quietly imperious.  If she could but
+gain ascendency even in a little, it might lead to a more open book of
+life for them both.
+
+Eglington held out his hand to the old man.  "I have kept you too long,
+sir.  Good-bye--if you will."
+
+The offered hand was not taken, but Faith slid hers into the old man's
+palm, and pressed it, and he said quietly to Eglington:
+
+"Good evening, friend."
+
+"And when I bring my wife, sir?" Eglington added, with a smile.
+
+"When thee brings the lady, there will be occasion to consider--there
+will be occasion then."
+
+Eglington raised his hat, and turned back upon the path he and Faith had
+travelled.
+
+The old man stood watching him until he was out of view.  Then he seemed
+more himself.  Still holding Faith's hand, he walked with her on the
+gorse-covered hill towards the graveyard.
+
+"Was it his heart spoke or his tongue--is there any truth in him?" he
+asked at last.
+
+Faith pressed his hand.  "If he help Davy, father--"
+
+"If he help Davy; ay, if he help Davy!  Nay, I cannot go to the
+graveyard, Faith.  Take me home," he said with emotion.
+
+His hand remained in hers.  She had conquered.  She was set upon a new
+path of influence.  Her hand was upon the door of his heart.
+
+"Thee is good to me, Faith," he said, as they entered the door of the Red
+Mansion.
+
+She glanced over towards the Cloistered House.  Smoke was coming from the
+little chimney of the laboratory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE WOMAN OF THE CROSS-ROADS
+
+The night came down slowly.  There was no moon, the stars were few, but a
+mellow warmth was in the air.  At the window of her little sitting-room
+up-stairs Faith sat looking out into the stillness.  Beneath was the
+garden with its profusion of flowers and fruit; away to the left was the
+common; and beyond-far beyond--was a glow in the sky, a suffused light,
+of a delicate orange, merging away into a grey-blueness, deepening into
+a darker blue; and then a purple depth, palpable and heavy with a
+comforting silence.
+
+There was something alluring and suggestive in the soft, smothered
+radiance.  It had all the glamour of some distant place of pleasure and
+quiet joy, of happiness and ethereal being.  It was, in fact, the far-off
+mirror of the flaming furnace of the great Heddington factories.  The
+light of the sky above was a soft radiance, as of a happy Arcadian land;
+the fire of the toil beneath was the output of human striving, an
+intricate interweaving of vital forces which, like some Titanic machine,
+wrought out in pain--a vast destiny.
+
+As Faith looked, she thought of the thousands beneath struggling and
+striving, none with all desires satisfied, some in an agony of want and
+penury, all straining for the elusive Enough; like Sisyphus ever rolling
+the rock of labour up a hill too steep for them.
+
+Her mind flew to the man Kimber and his task of organising labour for its
+own advance.  What a life-work for a man!  Here might David have spent
+his days, here among his own countrymen, instead of in that far-off land
+where all the forces of centuries were fighting against him.  Here the
+forces would have been fighting for him; the trend was towards the
+elevation of the standards of living and the wider rights of labour,
+to the amelioration of hard conditions of life among the poor.  David's
+mind, with its equity, its balance, and its fire--what might it not have
+accomplished in shepherding such a cause, guiding its activity?
+
+The gate of the garden clicked.  Kate Heaver had arrived.  Faith got to
+her feet and left the room.
+
+A few minutes later the woman of the cross-roads was seated opposite
+Faith at the window.  She had changed greatly since the day David had
+sent her on her way to London and into the unknown.  Then there had been
+recklessness, something of coarseness, in the fine face.  Now it was
+strong and quiet, marked by purpose and self-reliance.
+
+Ignorance had been her only peril in the past, as it had been the cause
+of her unhappy connection with Jasper Kimber.  The atmosphere in which
+she was raised had been unmoral; it had not been consciously immoral.
+Her temper and her indignation against her man for drinking had been the
+means of driving them apart.  He would have married her in those days, if
+she had given the word, for her will was stronger than his own; but she
+had broken from him in an agony of rage and regret and despised love.
+
+She was now, again, as she had been in those first days before she went
+with Jasper Kimber; when she was the rose-red angel of the quarters; when
+children were lured by the touch of her large, shapely hands; when she
+had been counted a great nurse among her neighbours.  The old simple
+untutored sympathy was in her face.
+
+They sat for a long time in silence, and at length Faith said: "Thee is
+happy now with her who is to marry Lord Eglington?"
+
+Kate nodded, smiling.  "Who could help but be happy with her!  Yet a
+temper, too--so quick, and then all over in a second.  Ah, she is one
+that'd break her heart if she was treated bad; but I'd be sorry for him
+that did it.  For the like of her goes mad with hurting, and the mad cut
+with a big scythe."
+
+"Has thee seen Lord Eglington?"
+
+"Once before I left these parts and often in London."  Her voice was
+constrained; she seemed not to wish to speak of him.
+
+"Is it true that Jasper Kimber is to stand against him for Parliament?"
+
+"I do not know.  They say my lord has to do with foreign lands now.  If
+he helps Mr. Claridge there, then it would be a foolish thing for Jasper
+to fight him; and so I've told him.  You've got to stand by those that
+stand by you.  Lord Eglington has his own way of doing things.  There's
+not a servant in my lady's house that he hasn't made his friend.  He's
+one that's bound to have his will.  I heard my lady say he talks better
+than any one in England, and there's none she doesn't know from duchesses
+down."
+
+"She is beautiful?" asked Faith, with hesitation.
+
+"Taller than you, but not so beautiful."
+
+Faith sighed, and was silent for a moment, then she laid a hand upon the
+other's shoulder.  "Thee has never said what happened when thee first got
+to London.  Does thee care to say?"
+
+"It seems so long ago," was the reply.  .  .  .  "No need to tell of the
+journey to London.  When I got there it frightened me at first.  My head
+went round.  But somehow it came to me what I should do.  I asked my way
+to a hospital.  I'd helped a many that was hurt at Heddington and
+thereabouts, and doctors said I was as good as them that was trained.
+I found a hospital at last, and asked for work, but they laughed at me--
+it was the porter at the door.  I was not to be put down, and asked to
+see some one that had rights to say yes or no.  So he opened the door and
+told me to go.  I said he was no man to treat a woman so, and I would not
+go.  Then a fine white-haired gentleman came forward.  He had heard all
+we had said, standing in a little room at one side.  He spoke a kind word
+or two, and asked me to go into the little room.  Before I had time to
+think, he came to me with the matron, and left me with her.  I told her
+the whole truth, and she looked at first as if she'd turn me out.  But
+the end of it was I stayed there for the night, and in the morning the
+old gentleman came again, and with him his lady, as kind and sharp of
+tongue as himself, and as big as three.  Some things she said made my
+tongue ache to speak back to her; but I choked it down.  I went to her to
+be a sort of nurse and maid.  She taught me how to do a hundred things,
+and by-and-by I couldn't be too thankful she had taken me in.  I was with
+her till she died.  Then, six months ago I went to Miss Maryon, who knew
+about me long before from her that died.  With her I've been ever since--
+and so that's all."
+
+"Surely God has been kind to thee."
+
+"I'd have gone down--down--down, if it hadn't been for Mr. Claridge at
+the cross-roads."
+
+"Does thee think I shall like her that will live yonder?" She nodded
+towards the Cloistered House.  "There's none but likes her.  She will
+want a friend, I'm thinking.  She'll be lonely by-and-by.  Surely, she
+will be lonely."
+
+Faith looked at her closely, and at last leaned over, and again laid a
+soft hand on her shoulder.  "Thee thinks that--why?"
+
+"He cares only what matters to himself.  She will be naught to him but
+one that belongs.  He'll never try to do her good.  Doing good to any but
+himself never comes to his mind."
+
+"How does thee know him, to speak so surely?"
+
+"When, at the first, he gave me a letter for her one day, and slipped a
+sovereign into my hand, and nodded, and smiled at me, I knew him right
+enough.  He never could be true to aught."
+
+"Did thee keep the sovereign?" Faith asked anxiously.
+
+"Ay, that I did.  If he was for giving his money away, I'd take it fast
+enough.  The gold gave father boots for a year.  Why should I mind?"
+
+Faith's face suffused.  How low was Eglington's estimate of humanity!
+
+In the silence that followed the door of her room opened, and her father
+entered.  He held in one hand a paper, in the other a candle.  His face
+was passive, but his eyes were burning.
+
+"David--David is coming," he cried, in a voice that rang.  "Does thee
+hear, Faith?  Davy is coming home!"  A woman laughed exultantly.  It was
+not Faith.  But still two years passed before David came.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+TIME, THE IDOL-BREAKER
+
+Lord Windlehurst looked meditatively round the crowded and brilliant
+salon.  His host, the Foreign Minister, had gathered in the vast golden
+chamber the most notable people of a most notable season, and in as
+critical a period of the world's politics as had been known for a quarter
+of a century.  After a moment's survey, the ex-Prime-Minister turned to
+answer the frank and caustic words addressed to him by the Duchess of
+Snowdon concerning the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs.  Presently he
+said:
+
+"But there is method in his haste, dear lady.  He is good at his
+dangerous game.  He plays high, he plunges; but, somehow, he makes it do.
+I've been in Parliament a generation or so, and I've never known an
+amateur more daring and skilful.  I should have given him office had I
+remained in power.  Look at him, and tell me if he wouldn't have been
+worth the backing."
+
+As Lord Windlehurst uttered the last word with an arid smile, he looked
+quizzically at the central figure of a group of people gaily talking.
+
+The Duchess impatiently tapped her knee with a fan.  "Be thankful you
+haven't got him on your conscience," she rejoined.  "I call Eglington
+unscrupulous and unreliable.  He has but one god--getting on; and he has
+got on, with a vengeance.  Whenever I look at that dear thing he's
+married, I feel there's no trusting Providence, who seems to make the
+deserving a footstool for the undeserving.  I've known Hylda since she
+was ten, and I've known him since the minute he came into the world, and
+I've got the measure of both.  She is the finest essence the middle class
+can distil, and he, oh, he's paraffin-vin ordinaire, if you like it
+better, a selfish, calculating adventurer!"
+
+Lord Windlehurst chuckled mordantly.  "Adventurer!  That's what they
+called me--with more reason.  I spotted him as soon as he spoke in the
+House.  There was devilry in him, and unscrupulousness, as you say; but,
+I confess, I thought it would give way to the more profitable habit of
+integrity, and that some cause would seize him, make him sincere and
+mistaken, and give him a few falls.  But in that he was more original
+than I thought.  He is superior to convictions.  You don't think he
+married yonder Queen of Hearts from conviction, do you?"
+
+He nodded towards a corner where Hylda, under a great palm, and backed by
+a bank of flowers, stood surrounded by a group of people palpably amused
+and interested; for she had a reputation for wit--a wit that never hurt,
+and irony that was only whimsical.
+
+"No, there you are wrong," the Duchess answered.  "He married from
+conviction, if ever a man did.  Look at her beauty, look at her fortune,
+listen to her tongue.  Don't you think conviction was easy?"
+
+Lord Windlehurst looked at Hylda approvingly.  She has the real gift--
+little information, but much knowledge, the primary gift of public life.
+Information is full of traps; knowledge avoids them, it reads men; and
+politics is men--and foreign affairs, perhaps!  She is remarkable.  I've
+made some hay in the political world, not so much as the babblers think,
+but I hadn't her ability at twenty-five."
+
+"Why didn't she see through Eglington?"
+
+"My dear Betty, he didn't give her time.  He carried her off her feet.
+You know how he can talk."
+
+"That's the trouble.  She was clever, and liked a clever man, and he--!"
+
+"Quite so.  He'd disprove his own honest parentage, if it would help him
+on--as you say."
+
+"I didn't say it.  Now don't repeat that as from me.  I'm not clever
+enough to think of such things.  But that Eglington lot--I knew his
+father and his grandfather.  Old Broadbrim they called his grandfather
+after he turned Quaker, and he didn't do that till he had had his fling,
+so my father used to say.  And Old Broadbrim's father was called I-want-
+to-know.  He was always poking his nose into things, and playing at being
+a chemist-like this one and the one before.  They all fly off.  This
+one's father used to disappear for two or three years at a time.  This
+one will fly off, too.  You'll see!
+
+"He is too keen on Number One for that, I fancy.  He calculates like a
+mathematician.  As cool as a cracksman of fame and fancy."
+
+The Duchess dropped the fan in her lap.  "My dear, I've said nothing as
+bad as that about him.  And there he is at the Foreign Office!"
+
+"Yet, what has he done, Betty, after all?  He has never cheated at cards,
+or forged a cheque, or run away with his neighbour's wife."
+
+"There's no credit in not doing what you don't want to do.  There's no
+virtue in not falling, when you're not tempted.  Neighbour's wife!  He
+hasn't enough feeling to face it.  Oh no, he'll not break the heart of
+his neighbour's wife.  That's melodrama, and he's a cold-blooded artist.
+He will torture that sweet child over there until she poisons him, or
+runs away."
+
+"Isn't he too clever for that?  She has a million!"
+
+"He'll not realise it till it's all over.  He's too selfish to see--how I
+hate him!"
+
+Lord Windlehurst smiled indulgently at her.  "Ah, you never hated any
+one--not even the Duke."
+
+"I will not have you take away my character.  Of course I've hated, or I
+wouldn't be worth a button.  I'm not the silly thing you've always
+thought me."
+
+His face became gentler.  "I've always thought you one of the wisest
+women of this world--adventurous, but wise.  If it weren't too late, if
+my day weren't over, I'd ask the one great favour, Betty, and--"
+
+She tapped his arm sharply with her fan.  "What a humbug you are--the
+Great Pretender!  But tell me, am I not right about Eglington?"
+
+Windlehurst became grave.  "Yes, you are right--but I admire him, too.
+He is determined to test himself to the full.  His ambition is boundless
+and ruthless, but his mind has a scientific turn--the obligation of
+energy to apply itself, of intelligence to engage itself to the farthest
+limit.  But service to humanity--"
+
+"Service to humanity!" she sniffed.
+
+"Of course he would think it 'flap-doodle'--except in a speech; but
+I repeat, I admire him.  Think of it all.  He was a poor Irish peer,
+with no wide circle of acquaintance, come of a family none too popular.
+He strikes out a course for himself--a course which had its dangers,
+because it was original.  He determines to become celebrated--by becoming
+notorious first.  He uses his title as a weapon for advancement as though
+he were a butter merchant.  He plans carefully and adroitly.  He writes
+a book of travel.  It is impudent, and it traverses the observations of
+authorities, and the scientific geographers prance with rage.  That was
+what he wished.  He writes a novel.  It sets London laughing at me, his
+political chief.  He knew me well enough to be sure I would not resent
+it.  He would have lampooned his grandmother, if he was sure she would
+not, or could not, hurt him.  Then he becomes more audacious.  He
+publishes a monograph on the painters of Spain, artificial, confident,
+rhetorical, acute: as fascinating as a hide-and-seek drawing-room play--
+he is so cleverly escaping from his ignorance and indiscretions all the
+while.  Connoisseurs laugh, students of art shriek a little, and Ruskin
+writes a scathing letter, which was what he had played for.  He had got
+something for nothing cheaply.  The few who knew and despised him did not
+matter, for they were able and learned and obscure, and, in the world
+where he moves, most people are superficial, mediocre, and 'tuppence
+coloured.' It was all very brilliant.  He pursued his notoriety, and got
+it."
+
+"Industrious Eglington!"
+
+"But, yes, he is industrious.  It is all business.  It was an enormous
+risk, rebelling against his party, and leaving me, and going over; but
+his temerity justified itself, and it didn't matter to him that people
+said he went over to get office as we were going out.  He got the office-
+and people forget so soon.  Then, what does he do--"
+
+"He brings out another book, and marries a wife, and abuses his old
+friends--and you."
+
+"Abuse?  With his tongue in his cheek, hoping that I should reply.
+Dev'lishly ingenious!  But on that book of Electricity and Disease he
+scored.  In most other things he's a barber-shop philosopher, but in
+science he has got a flare, a real talent.  So he moves modestly in this
+thing, for which he had a fine natural gift and more knowledge than he
+ever had before in any department, whose boundaries his impertinent and
+ignorant mind had invaded.  That book gave him a place.  It wasn't full
+of new things, but it crystallised the discoveries, suggestions, and
+expectations of others; and, meanwhile, he had got a name at no cost.  He
+is so various.  Look at it dispassionately, and you will see much to
+admire in his skill.  He pleases, he amuses, he startles, he baffles, he
+mystifies."
+
+The Duchess made an impatient exclamation.  "The silly newspapers call
+him a 'remarkable man, a personality.' Now, believe me, Windlehurst, he
+will overreach himself one of these days, and he'll come down like a
+stick."
+
+"There you are on solid ground.  He thinks that Fate is with him, and
+that, in taking risks, he is infallible.  But the best system breaks at
+political roulette sooner or later.  You have got to work for something
+outside yourself, something that is bigger than the game, or the end is
+sickening."
+
+"Eglington hasn't far to go, if that's the truth."
+
+"Well, well, when it comes, we must help him--we must help him up again."
+
+The Duchess nervously adjusted her wig, with ludicrously tiny fingers for
+one so ample, and said petulantly: "You are incomprehensible.  He has
+been a traitor to you and to your party, he has thrown mud at you, he has
+played with principles as my terrier plays with his rubber ball, and yet
+you'll run and pick him up when he falls, and--"
+
+"'And kiss the spot to make it well,'" he laughed softly, then added with
+a sigh: "Able men in public life are few; 'far too few, for half our
+tasks; we can spare not one.'  Besides, my dear Betty, there is his
+pretty lass o' London."
+
+The Duchess was mollified at once.  "I wish she had been my girl," she
+said, in a voice a little tremulous.  "She never needed looking after.
+Look at the position she has made for herself.  Her father wouldn't go
+into society, her mother knew a mere handful of people, and--"
+
+"She knew you, Betty."
+
+"Well, suppose I did help her a little--I was only a kind of reference.
+She did the rest.  She's set a half-dozen fashions herself--pure genius.
+She was born to lead.  Her turnouts were always a little smarter, her
+horses travelled a little faster, than other people's.  She took risks,
+too, but she didn't play a game; she only wanted to do things well.  We
+all gasped when she brought Adelaide to recite from 'Romeo and Juliet' at
+an evening party, but all London did the same the week after."
+
+"She discovered, and the Duchess of Snowdon applied the science.
+Ah, Betty, don't think I don't agree.  She has the gift.  She has
+temperament.  No woman should have temperament.  She hasn't scope enough
+to wear it out in some passion for a cause.  Men are saved in spite of
+themselves by the law of work.  Forty comes to a man of temperament,
+and then a passion for a cause seizes him, and he is safe.  A woman of
+temperament at forty is apt to cut across the bows of iron-clad
+convention and go down.  She has temperament, has my lady yonder, and I
+don't like the look of her eyes sometimes.  There's dark fire smouldering
+in them.  She should have a cause; but a cause to a woman now-a-days
+means 'too little of pleasure, too much of pain,' for others."
+
+"What was your real cause, Windlehurst?  You had one, I suppose, for
+you've never had a fall."
+
+"My cause?  You ask that?  Behold the barren figtree!  A lifetime in my
+country's service, and you who have driven me home from the House in your
+own brougham, and told me that you understood--oh, Betty!"
+
+She laughed.  "You'll say something funny as you're dying, Windlehurst."
+
+"Perhaps.  But it will be funny to know that presently I'll have a secret
+that none of you know, who watch me 'launch my pinnace into the dark.'
+But causes?  There are hundreds, and all worth while.  I've come here
+to-night for a cause--no, don't start, it's not you, Betty, though you
+are worth any sacrifice.  I've come here to-night to see a modern
+Paladin, a real crusader:
+
+"'Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims
+into his ken.'"
+
+"Yes, that's poetry, Windlehurst, and you know I love it-I've always kept
+yours.  But who's the man--the planet?"
+
+"Egyptian Claridge."
+
+"Ah, he is in England?"
+
+"He will be here to-night; you shall see him."
+
+"Really!  What is his origin?"
+
+He told her briefly, adding: "I've watched the rise of Claridge Pasha.
+I've watched his cause grow, and now I shall see the man--ah, but here
+comes our lass o' London!"
+
+The eyes of both brightened, and a whimsical pleasure came to the mask-
+like face of Lord Windlehurst.  There was an eager and delighted look in
+Hylda's face also as she quickly came to them, her cavaliers following.
+
+The five years that had passed since that tragic night in Cairo had been
+more than kind to her.  She was lissome, radiant, and dignified, her face
+was alive with expression, and a delicate grace was in every movement.
+The dark lashes seemed to have grown longer, the brown hair fuller, the
+smile softer and more alluring.
+
+"She is an invaluable asset to the Government," Lord Windlehurst murmured
+as she came.  "No wonder the party helped the marriage on.  London
+conspired for it, her feet got tangled in the web--and he gave her no
+time to think.  Thinking had saved her till he came."
+
+By instinct Lord Windlehurst knew.  During the first year after the
+catastrophe at Kaid's Palace Hylda could scarcely endure the advances
+made by her many admirers, the greatly eligible and the eager ineligible,
+all with as real an appreciation of her wealth as of her personal
+attributes.  But she took her place in London life with more than the
+old will to make for herself, with the help of her aunt Conyngham,
+an individual position.
+
+The second year after her visit to Egypt she was less haunted by the dark
+episode of the Palace, memory tortured her less; she came to think of
+David and the part he had played with less agitation.  At first the
+thought of him had moved her alternately to sympathy and to revolt.
+His chivalry had filled her with admiration, with a sense of confidence,
+of dependence, of touching and vital obligation; but there was, too,
+another overmastering feeling.  He had seen her life naked, as it were,
+stripped of all independence, with the knowledge of a dangerous
+indiscretion which, to say the least, was a deformity; and she inwardly
+resented it, as one would resent the exposure of a long-hidden physical
+deformity, even by the surgeon who saved one's life.  It was not a very
+lofty attitude of mind, but it was human--and feminine.
+
+These moods had been always dissipated, however, when she recalled,
+as she did so often, David as he stood before Nahoum Pasha, his soul
+fighting in him to make of his enemy--of the man whose brother he had
+killed--a fellow-worker in the path of altruism he had mapped out for
+himself.  David's name had been continually mentioned in telegraphic
+reports and journalistic correspondence from Egypt; and from this source
+she had learned that Nahoum Pasha was again high in the service of Prince
+Kaid.  When the news of David's southern expedition to the revolting
+slave-dealing tribes began to appear, she was deeply roused.  Her
+agitation was the more intense because she never permitted herself to
+talk of him to others, even when his name was discussed at dinner-tables,
+accompanied by strange legends of his origin and stranger romances
+regarding his call to power by Kaid.
+
+She had surrounded him with romance; he seemed more a hero of history
+than of her own real and living world, a being apart.  Even when there
+came rumblings of disaster, dark dangers to be conquered by the Quaker
+crusader, it all was still as of another life.  True it was, that when
+his safe return to Cairo was announced she had cried with joy and relief;
+but there was nothing emotional or passionate in her feeling; it was the
+love of the lower for the higher, the hero-worship of an idealist in
+passionate gratitude.
+
+And, amid it all, her mind scarcely realised that they would surely meet
+again.  At the end of the second year the thought had receded into an
+almost indefinite past.  She was beginning to feel that she had lived
+two lives, and that this life had no direct or vital bearing upon her
+previous existence, in which David had moved.  Yet now and then the
+perfume of the Egyptian garden, through which she had fled to escape from
+tragedy, swept over her senses, clouded her eyes in the daytime, made
+them burn at night.
+
+At last she had come to meet and know Eglington.  From the first moment
+they met he had directed his course towards marriage.  He was the man of
+the moment.  His ambition seemed but patriotism, his ardent and
+overwhelming courtship the impulse of a powerful nature.  As Lord
+Windlehurst had said, he carried her off her feet, and, on a wave of
+devotion and popular encouragement, he had swept her to the altar,
+
+The Duchess held both her hands for a moment, admiring her, and,
+presently, with a playful remark upon her unselfishness, left her alone
+with Lord Windlehurst.
+
+As they talked, his mask-like face became lighted from the brilliant fire
+in the inquisitorial eyes, his lips played with topics of the moment in a
+mordant fashion, which drew from her flashing replies.  Looking at her,
+he was conscious of the mingled qualities of three races in her--English,
+Welsh, and American-Dutch of the Knickerbocker strain; and he contrasted
+her keen perception and her exquisite sensitiveness with the purebred
+Englishwomen round him, stately, kindly, handsome, and monotonously
+intelligent.
+
+"Now I often wonder," he said, conscious of, but indifferent to, the
+knowledge that he and the brilliant person beside him were objects of
+general attention--"I often wonder, when I look at a gathering like this,
+how many undiscovered crimes there are playing about among us.  They
+never do tell--or shall I say, we never do tell?"
+
+All day, she knew not why, Hylda had been nervous and excited.  Without
+reason his words startled her.  Now there flashed before her eyes a room
+in a Palace at Cairo, and a man lying dead before her.  The light slowly
+faded out of her eyes, leaving them almost lustreless, but her face was
+calm, and the smile on her lips stayed.  She fanned herself slowly, and
+answered nonchalantly: "Crime is a word of many meanings.  I read in the
+papers of political crimes--it is a common phrase; yet the criminals
+appear to go unpunished."
+
+"There you are wrong," he answered cynically.  "The punishment is, that
+political virtue goes unrewarded, and in due course crime is the only
+refuge to most.  Yet in politics the temptation to be virtuous is great."
+
+She laughed now with a sense of relief.  The intellectual stimulant
+had brought back the light to her face.  "How is it, then, with you--
+inveterate habit or the strain of the ages?  For they say you have not
+had your due reward."
+
+He smiled grimly.  "Ah, no, with me virtue is the act of an inquiring
+mind--to discover where it will lead me.  I began with political crime--
+I was understood!  I practise political virtue: it embarrasses the world,
+it fogs them, it seems original, because so unnecessary.  Mine is the
+scientific life.  Experiment in old substances gives new--well, say, new
+precipitations.  But you are scientific, too.  You have a laboratory, and
+have much to do--with retorts."
+
+"No, you are thinking of my husband.  The laboratory is his."
+
+"But the retorts are yours."
+
+"The precipitations are his."
+
+"Ah, well, at least you help him to fuse the constituents!  .  .  .  But
+now, be quite confidential to an old man who has experimented too.  Is
+your husband really an amateur scientist, or is he a scientific amateur?
+Is it a pose or a taste?  I fiddled once--and wrote sonnets; one was a
+pose, the other a taste."
+
+It was mere persiflage, but it was a jest which made an unintended wound.
+Hylda became conscious of a sudden sharp inquiry going on in her mind.
+There flashed into it the question, Does Eglington's heart ever really
+throb for love of any object or any cause?  Even in moments of greatest
+intimacy, soon after marriage, when he was most demonstrative towards
+her, he had seemed preoccupied, except when speaking about himself and
+what he meant to do.  Then he made her heart throb in response to his
+confident, ardent words--concerning himself.  But his own heart, did it
+throb?  Or was it only his brain that throbbed?
+
+Suddenly, with an exclamation, she involuntarily laid a hand upon
+Windlehurst's arm.  She was looking down the room straight before her to
+a group of people towards which other groups were now converging,
+attracted by one who seemed to be a centre of interest.
+
+Presently the eager onlookers drew aside, and Lord Windlehurst observed
+moving up the room a figure he had never seen before.  The new-comer was
+dressed in a grey and blue official dress, unrelieved save by silver
+braid at the collar and at the wrists.  There was no decoration, but on
+the head was a red fez, which gave prominence to the white, broad
+forehead, with the dark hair waving away behind the ears.  Lord
+Windlehurst held his eye-glass to his eye in interested scrutiny.  "H'm,"
+he said, with lips pursed out, "a most notable figure, a most remarkable
+face!  My dear, there's a fortune in that face.  It's a national asset."
+
+He saw the flush, the dumb amazement, the poignant look in Lady
+Eglington's face, and registered it in his mind.  "Poor thing," he said
+to himself, "I wonder what it is all about--I wonder.  I thought she had
+no unregulated moments.  She gave promise of better things."  The Foreign
+Minister was bringing his guest towards them.  The new-comer did not look
+at them till within a few steps of where they stood.  Then his eyes met
+those of Lady Eglington.  For an instant his steps were arrested.  A
+swift light came into his face, softening its quiet austerity and
+strength.
+
+It was David.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+SHARPER THAN A SWORD
+
+A glance of the eye was the only sign of recognition between David and
+Hylda; nothing that others saw could have suggested that they had ever
+met before.  Lord Windlehurst at once engaged David in conversation.
+
+At first when Hylda had come back from Egypt, those five years ago, she
+had often wondered what she would think or do if she ever were to see
+this man again; whether, indeed, she could bear it.  Well, the moment and
+the man had come.  Her eyes had gone blind for an instant; it had seemed
+for one sharp, crucial moment as though she could not bear it; then the
+gulf of agitation was passed, and she had herself in hand.
+
+While her mind was engaged subconsciously with what Lord Windlehurst and
+David said, comprehending it all, and, when Lord Windlehurst appealed to
+her, offering by a word contribution to the 'pourparler', she was
+studying David as steadily as her heated senses would permit her.
+
+He seemed to her to have put on twenty years in the steady force of his
+personality--in the composure of his bearing, in the self-reliance of his
+look, though his face and form were singularly youthful.  The face was
+handsome and alight, the look was that of one who weighed things; yet she
+was conscious of a great change.  The old delicate quality of the
+features was not so marked, though there was nothing material in the
+look, and the head had not a sordid line, while the hand that he now and
+again raised, brushing his forehead meditatively, had gained much in
+strength and force.  Yet there was something--something different, that
+brought a slight cloud into her eyes.  It came to her now, a certain
+melancholy in the bearing of the figure, erect and well-balanced as it
+was.  Once the feeling came, the certainty grew.  And presently she found
+a strange sadness in the eyes, something that lurked behind all that he
+did and all that he was, some shadow over the spirit.  It was even more
+apparent when he smiled.
+
+As she was conscious of this new reading of him, a motion arrested her
+glance, a quick lifting of the head to one side, as though the mind had
+suddenly been struck by an idea, the glance flying upward in abstracted
+questioning.  This she had seen in her husband, too, the same brisk
+lifting of the head, the same quick smiling.  Yet this face, unlike
+Eglington's, expressed a perfect single-mindedness; it wore the look of a
+self-effacing man of luminous force, a concentrated battery of energy.
+Since she had last seen him every sign of the provincial had vanished.
+He was now the well-modulated man of affairs, elegant in his simplicity
+of dress, with the dignified air of the intellectual, yet with the
+decision of a man who knew his mind.
+
+Lord Windlehurst was leaving.  Now David and she were alone.  Without a
+word they moved on together through the throng, the eyes of all following
+them, until they reached a quiet room at one end of the salon, where were
+only a few people watching the crowd pass the doorway.
+
+"You will be glad to sit," he said, motioning her to a chair beside some
+palms.  Then, with a change of tone, he added: "Thee is not sorry I am
+come?"
+
+Thee--the old-fashioned simple Quaker word!  She put her fingers to her
+eyes.  Her senses were swimming with a distant memory.  The East was in
+her brain, the glow of the skies, the gleam of the desert, the swish of
+the Nile, the cry of the sweet-seller, the song of the dance-girl, the
+strain of the darabukkeh, the call of the skis.  She saw again the
+ghiassas drifting down the great river, laden with dourha; she saw the
+mosque of the blue tiles with its placid fountain, and its handful of
+worshippers praying by the olive-tree.  She watched the moon rise above
+the immobile Sphinx, she looked down on the banqueters in the Palace,
+David among them, and Foorgat Bey beside her.  She saw Foorgat Bey again
+lying dead at her feet.  She heard the stir of the leaves; she caught the
+smell of the lime-trees in the Palace garden as she fled.  She recalled
+her reckless return to Cairo from Alexandria.  She remembered the little
+room where she and David, Nahoum and Mizraim, crossed a bridge over a
+chasm, and stood upon ground which had held good till now--till this
+hour, when the man who had played a most vital part in her life had
+come again out of a land which, by some forced obliquity of mind and
+stubbornness of will, she had assured herself she would never see again.
+
+She withdrew her hand from her eyes, and saw him looking at her calmly,
+though his face was alight.  "Thee is fatigued," he said.  "This is
+labour which wears away the strength."  He made a motion towards the
+crowd.
+
+She smiled a very little, and said: "You do not care for such things as
+this, I know.  Your life has its share of it, however, I suppose."
+
+He looked out over the throng before he answered.  "It seems an eddy of
+purposeless waters.  Yet there is great depth beneath, or there were no
+eddy; and where there is depth and the eddy there is danger--always."
+As he spoke she became almost herself again.  "You think that deep
+natures have most perils?"
+
+"Thee knows it is so.  Human nature is like the earth: the deeper the
+plough goes into the soil unploughed before, the more evil substance is
+turned up--evil that becomes alive as soon as the sun and the air fall
+upon it."
+
+"Then, women like me who pursue a flippant life, who ride in this merry-
+go-round"--she made a gesture towards the crowd beyond--"who have no
+depth, we are safest, we live upon the surface."  Her gaiety was forced;
+her words were feigned.
+
+"Thee has passed the point of danger, thee is safe," he answered
+meaningly.
+
+"Is that because I am not deep, or because the plough has been at work?"
+she asked.  "In neither case I am not sure you are right."
+
+"Thee is happily married," he said reflectively; "and the prospect is
+fair."
+
+"I think you know my husband," she said in answer, and yet not in answer.
+
+"I was born in Hamley where he has a place--thee has been there?" he
+asked eagerly.
+
+"Not yet.  We are to go next Sunday, for the first time to the Cloistered
+House.  I had not heard that my husband knew you, until I saw in the
+paper a few days ago that your home was in Hamley.  Then I asked
+Eglington, and he told me that your family and his had been neighbours
+for generations."
+
+"His father was a Quaker," David rejoined, "but he forsook the faith."
+
+"I did not know," she answered, with some hesitation.  There was no
+reason why, when she and Eglington had talked of Hamley, he should not
+have said his own father had once been a Quaker; yet she had dwelt so
+upon the fact that she herself had Quaker blood, and he had laughed so
+much over it, with the amusement of the superior person, that his silence
+on this one point struck her now with a sense of confusion.
+
+"You are going to Hamley--we shall meet there?" she continued.
+
+"To-day I should have gone, but I have business at the Foreign Office
+to-morrow.  One needs time to learn that all 'private interests and
+partial affections' must be sacrificed to public duty."
+
+"But you are going soon?  You will be there on Sunday?"
+
+"I shall be there to-morrow night, and Sunday, and for one long week at
+least.  Hamley is the centre of the world, the axle of the universe--you
+shall see.  You doubt it?" he added, with a whimsical smile.
+
+"I shall dispute most of what you say, and all that you think, if you do
+not continue to use the Quaker 'thee' and 'thou'--ungrammatical as you
+are so often."
+
+"Thee is now the only person in London, or in England, with whom I use
+'thee' and 'thou.'  I am no longer my own master, I am a public servant,
+and so I must follow custom."
+
+"It is destructive of personality.  The 'thee' and 'thou' belong to you.
+I wonder if the people of Hamley will say 'thee' and 'thou' to me.  I
+hope, I do hope they will."
+
+"Thee may be sure they will.  They are no respecters of persons there.
+They called your husband's father Robert--his name was Robert.  Friend
+Robert they called him, and afterwards they called him Robert Denton till
+he died."
+
+"Will they call me Hylda?" she asked, with a smile.  "More like they
+will call thee Friend Hylda; it sounds simple and strong," he replied.
+
+"As they call Claridge Pasha Friend David," she answered, with a smile.
+"David is a good name for a strong man."
+
+"That David threw a stone from a sling and smote a giant in the forehead.
+The stone from this David's sling falls into the ocean and is lost
+beneath the surface."
+
+His voice had taken on a somewhat sombre tone, his eyes looked away into
+the distance; yet he smiled too, and a hand upon his knee suddenly closed
+in sympathy with an inward determination.
+
+A light of understanding came into her face.  They had been keeping
+things upon the surface, and, while it lasted, he seemed a lesser man
+than she had thought him these past years.  But now--now there was the
+old unschooled simplicity, the unique and lonely personality, the homely
+soul and body bending to one root-idea, losing themselves in a wave of
+duty.  Again he was to her, once more, the dreamer, the worker, the
+conqueror--the conqueror of her own imagination.  She had in herself the
+soul of altruism, the heart of the crusader.  Touched by the fire of a
+great idea, she was of those who could have gone out into the world
+without wallet or scrip, to work passionately for some great end.
+
+And she had married the Earl of Eglington!
+
+She leaned towards David, and said eagerly: "But you are satisfied--you
+are satisfied with your work for poor Egypt?"
+
+"Thee says 'poor Egypt,'" he answered, "and thee says well.  Even now she
+is not far from the day of Rameses and Joseph.  Thee thinks perhaps thee
+knows Egypt--none knows her."
+
+"You know her--now?"
+
+He shook his head slowly.  "It is like putting one's ear to the mouth of
+the Sphinx.  Yet sometimes, almost in despair, when I have lain down in
+the desert beside my camel, set about with enemies, I have got a message
+from the barren desert, the wide silence, and the stars."  He paused.
+
+"What is the message that comes?" she asked softly.  "It is always the
+same: Work on!  Seek not to know too much, nor think that what you do is
+of vast value.  Work, because it is yours to be adjusting the machinery
+in your own little workshop of life to the wide mechanism of the universe
+and time.  One wheel set right, one flying belt adjusted, and there is a
+step forward to the final harmony--ah, but how I preach!" he added
+hastily.
+
+His eyes were fixed on hers with a great sincerity, and they were clear
+and shining, yet his lips were smiling--what a trick they had of smiling!
+He looked as though he should apologise for such words in such a place.
+
+She rose to her feet with a great suspiration, with a light in her eyes
+and a trembling smile.
+
+"But no, no, no, you inspire one.  Thee inspires me," she said, with a
+little laugh, in which there was a note of sadness.  "I may use 'thee,'
+may I not, when I will?  I am a little a Quaker also, am I not?  My
+people came from Derbyshire, my American people, that is--and only forty
+years ago.  Almost thee persuades me to be a Quaker now," she added.
+"And perhaps I shall be, too," she went on, her eyes fixed on the crowd
+passing by, Eglington among them.
+
+David saw Eglington also, and moved forward with her.
+
+"We shall meet in Hamley," she said composedly, as she saw her husband
+leave the crush and come towards her.  As Eglington noticed David,
+a curious enigmatical glance flashed from his eyes.  He came forward,
+however, with outstretched hand.
+
+"I am sorry I was not at the Foreign Office when you called to-day.
+Welcome back to England, home--and beauty."  He laughed in a rather
+mirthless way, but with a certain empressement, conscious, as he always
+was, of the onlookers.  "You have had a busy time in Egypt?" he
+continued cheerfully, and laughed again.
+
+David laughed slightly, also, and Hylda noticed that it had a certain
+resemblance in its quick naturalness to that of her husband.
+
+"I am not sure that we are so busy there as we ought to be," David
+answered.  "I have no real standards.  I am but an amateur, and have
+known nothing of public life.  But you should come and see."
+
+"It has been in my mind.  An ounce of eyesight is worth a ton of print.
+My lady was there once, I believe"--he turned towards her--"but before
+your time, I think.  Or did you meet there, perhaps?"  He glanced at both
+curiously.  He scarcely knew why a thought flashed into his mind--as
+though by some telepathic sense; for it had never been there before,
+and there was no reason for its being there now.
+
+Hylda saw what David was about to answer, and she knew instinctively that
+he would say they had never met.  It shamed her.  She intervened as she
+saw he was about to speak.
+
+"We were introduced for the first time to-night," she said; "but Claridge
+Pasha is part of my education in the world.  It is a miracle that Hamley
+should produce two such men," she added gaily, and laid her fan upon her
+husband's arm lightly.  "You should have been a Quaker, Harry, and then
+you two would have been--"
+
+"Two Quaker Don Quixotes," interrupted Eglington ironically.
+
+"I should not have called you a Don Quixote," his wife lightly rejoined,
+relieved at the turn things had taken.  "I cannot imagine you tilting at
+wind-mills--"
+
+"Or saving maidens in distress?  Well, perhaps not; but you do not
+suggest that Claridge Pasha tilts at windmills either--or saves maidens
+in distress.  Though, now I come to think, there was an episode."  He
+laughed maliciously.  "Some time ago it was--a lass of the cross-roads.
+I think I heard of such an adventure, which did credit to Claridge
+Pasha's heart, though it shocked Hamley at the time.  But I wonder,
+was the maiden really saved?"
+
+Lady Eglington's face became rigid.  "Well, yes," she said slowly, "the
+maiden was saved.  She is now my maid.  Hamley may have been shocked, but
+Claridge Pasha has every reason to be glad that he helped a fellow-being
+in trouble."
+
+"Your maid--Heaver?" asked Eglington in surprise, a swift shadow
+crossing his face.
+
+"Yes; she only told me this morning.  Perhaps she had seen that Claridge
+Pasha was coming to England.  I had not, however.  At any rate, Quixotism
+saved her."
+
+David smiled.  "It is better than I dared to hope," he remarked quietly.
+
+"But that is not all," continued Hylda.  "There is more.  She had been
+used badly by a man who now wants to marry her--has tried to do so for
+years.  Now, be prepared for a surprise, for it concerns you rather
+closely, Eglington.  Fate is a whimsical jade.  Whom do you think it is?
+Well, since you could never guess, it was Jasper Kimber."
+
+Eglington's eyes opened wide.  "This is nothing but a coarse and
+impossible stage coincidence," he laughed.  "It is one of those tricks
+played by Fact to discredit the imagination.  Life is laughing at us
+again.  The longer I live, the more I am conscious of being an object of
+derision by the scene-shifters in the wings of the stage.  What a cynical
+comedy life is at the best!"
+
+"It all seems natural enough," rejoined David.
+
+"It is all paradox."
+
+"Isn't it all inevitable law?  I have no belief in 'antic Fate.'"
+
+Hylda realised, with a new and poignant understanding, the difference of
+outlook on life between the two men.  She suddenly remembered the words
+of Confucius, which she had set down in her little book of daily life:
+"By nature we approximate, it is only experience that drives us apart."
+
+David would have been content to live in the desert all his life for the
+sake of a cause, making no calculations as to reward.  Eglington must
+ever have the counters for the game.
+
+"Well, if you do not believe in 'antic Fate,' you must be greatly puzzled
+as you go on," he rejoined, laughing; "especially in Egypt, where the
+East and the West collide, race against race, religion against religion,
+Oriental mind against Occidental intellect.  You have an unusual quantity
+of Quaker composure, to see in it all 'inevitable law.'  And it must be
+dull.  But you always were, so they say in Hamley, a monument of
+seriousness."
+
+"I believe they made one or two exceptions," answered David drily.
+"I had assurances."
+
+Eglington laughed boyishly.  "You are right.  You achieved a name for
+humour in a day--'a glass, a kick, and a kiss,' it was.  Do you have such
+days in Egypt?"
+
+"You must come and see," David answered lightly, declining to notice the
+insolence.  "These are critical days there.  The problems are worthy of
+your care.  Will you not come?"
+
+Eglington was conscious of a peculiar persuasive influence over himself
+that he had never felt before.  In proportion, however, as he felt its
+compelling quality, there came a jealousy of the man who was its cause.
+The old antagonism, which had had its sharpest expression the last time
+they had met on the platform at Heddington, came back.  It was one strong
+will resenting another--as though there was not room enough in the wide
+world of being for these two atoms of life, sparks from the ceaseless
+wheel, one making a little brighter flash than the other for the moment,
+and then presently darkness, and the whirring wheel which threw them off,
+throwing off millions of others again.
+
+On the moment Eglington had a temptation to say something with an edge,
+which would show David that his success in Egypt hung upon the course
+that he himself and the weak Foreign Minister, under whom he served,
+would take.  And this course would be his own course largely, since he
+had been appointed to be a force and strength in the Foreign Office which
+his chief did not supply.  He refrained, however, and, on the moment,
+remembered the promise he had given to Faith to help David.
+
+A wave of feeling passed over him.  His wife was beautiful, a creature of
+various charms, a centre of attraction.  Yet he had never really loved
+her--so many sordid elements had entered into the thought of marriage
+with her, lowering the character of his affection.  With a perversity
+which only such men know, such heart as he had turned to the unknown
+Quaker girl who had rebuked him, scathed him, laid bare his soul before
+himself, as no one ever had done.  To Eglington it was a relief that
+there was one human being--he thought there was only one--who read him
+through and through; and that knowledge was in itself as powerful an
+influence as was the secret between David and Hylda.  It was a kind of
+confessional, comforting to a nature not self-contained.  Now he
+restrained his cynical intention to deal David a side-thrust,
+and quietly said:
+
+"We shall meet at Hamley, shall we not?  Let us talk there, and not at
+the Foreign Office.  You would care to go to Egypt, Hylda?"
+
+She forced a smile.  "Let us talk it over at Hamley."  With a smile to
+David she turned away to some friends.
+
+Eglington offered to introduce David to some notable people, but he said
+that he must go--he was fatigued after his journey.  He had no wish to be
+lionised.
+
+As he left the salon, the band was playing a tune that made him close his
+eyes, as though against something he would not see.  The band in Kaid's
+Palace had played it that night when he had killed Foorgat Bey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+EACH AFTER HIS OWN ORDER
+
+With the passing years new feelings had grown up in the heart of Luke
+Claridge.  Once David's destiny and career were his own peculiar and
+self-assumed responsibility.  "Inwardly convicted," he had wrenched the
+lad away from the natural circumstances of his life, and created a scheme
+of existence for him out of his own conscience--a pious egoist.
+
+After David went to Egypt, however, his mind involuntarily formed the
+resolution that "Davy and God should work it out together."
+
+He had grown very old in appearance, and his quiet face was almost
+painfully white; but the eyes burned with more fire than in the past.
+As the day approached when David should arrive in England, he walked by
+himself continuously, oblivious of the world round him.  He spoke to no
+one, save the wizened Elder Meacham, and to John Fairley, who rightly
+felt that he had a share in the making of Claridge Pasha.
+
+With head perched in the air, and face half hidden in his great white
+collar, the wizened Elder, stopping Luke Claridge in the street one day,
+said:
+
+"Does thee think the lad will ride in Pharaoh's chariot here?"
+
+There were sly lines of humour about the mouth of the wizened Elder as he
+spoke, but Luke Claridge did not see.
+
+"Pride is far from his heart," he answered portentously.  "He will ride
+in no chariot.  He has written that he will walk here from Heddington,
+and none is to meet him."
+
+"He will come by the cross-roads, perhaps," rejoined the other piously.
+"Well, well, memory is a flower or a rod, as John Fox said, and the
+cross-roads have memories for him."
+
+Again flashes of humour crossed his face, for he had a wide humanity, of
+insufficient exercise.
+
+"He has made full atonement, and thee does ill to recall the past,
+Reuben," rejoined the other sternly.
+
+"If he has done no more that needs atonement than he did that day at the
+cross-roads, then has his history been worthy of Hamley," rejoined the
+wizened Elder, eyes shut and head buried in his collar.  "Hamley made
+him--Hamley made him.  We did not spare advice, or example, or any
+correction that came to our minds--indeed, it was almost a luxury.  Think
+you, does he still play the flute--an instrument none too grave, Luke?"
+
+But, to this, Luke Claridge exclaimed impatiently and hastened on; and
+the little wizened Elder chuckled to himself all the way to the house of
+John Fairley.  None in Hamley took such pride in David as did these two
+old men, who had loved him from a child, but had discreetly hidden their
+favour, save to each other.  Many times they had met and prayed together
+in the weeks when his life was in notorious danger in the Soudan.
+
+As David walked through the streets of Heddington making for the open
+country, he was conscious of a new feeling regarding the place.  It was
+familiar, but in a new sense.  Its grimy, narrow streets, unlovely
+houses, with shut windows, summer though it was, and no softening
+influences anywhere, save here and there a box of sickly geraniums in the
+windows, all struck his mind in a way they had never done before.  A mile
+away were the green fields, the woods, the roadsides gay with flowers and
+shrubs-loveliness was but over the wall, as it were; yet here the
+barrack-like houses, the grey, harsh streets, seemed like prison walls,
+and the people in them prisoners who, with every legal right to call
+themselves free, were as much captives as the criminal on some small
+island in a dangerous sea.  Escape--where?  Into the gulf of no work and
+degradation?
+
+They never lifted their eyes above the day's labour.  They were scarce
+conscious of anything beyond.  What were their pleasures?  They had
+imitations of pleasures.  To them a funeral or a wedding, a riot or a
+vociferous band, a dog-fight or a strike, were alike in this, that they
+quickened feelings which carried them out of themselves, gave them a
+sense of intoxication.
+
+Intoxication?  David remembered the far-off day of his own wild rebellion
+in Hamley.  From that day forward he had better realised that in the
+hearts of so many of the human race there was a passion to forget
+themselves; to blot out, if for a moment only, the troubles of life and
+time; or, by creating a false air of exaltation, to rise above them.
+Once in the desert, when men were dying round him of fever and dysentery,
+he had been obliged, exhausted and ill, scarce able to drag himself from
+his bed, to resort to an opiate to allay his own sufferings, that he
+might minister to others.  He remembered how, in the atmosphere it had
+created--an intoxication, a soothing exhilaration and pervasive thrill--
+he had saved so many of his followers.  Since then the temptation had
+come upon him often when trouble weighed or difficulties surrounded him
+--accompanied always by recurrence of fever--to resort to the insidious
+medicine.  Though he had fought the temptation with every inch of his
+strength, he could too well understand those who sought for "surcease of
+pain"
+
+                   "Seeking for surcease of pain,
+                    Pilgrim to Lethe I came;
+                    Drank not, for pride was too keen,
+                    Stung by the sound of a name!"
+
+As the plough of action had gone deep into his life and laid bare his
+nature to the light, there had been exposed things which struggled for
+life and power in him, with the fiery strength which only evil has.
+
+The western heavens were aglow.  On every hand the gorse and the may were
+in bloom, the lilacs were coming to their end, but wild rhododendrons
+were glowing in the bracken, as he stepped along the road towards the
+place where he was born.  Though every tree and roadmark was familiar,
+yet he was conscious of a new outlook.  He had left these quiet scenes
+inexperienced and untravelled, to be thrust suddenly into the thick of a
+struggle of nations over a sick land.  He had worked in a vortex of
+debilitating local intrigue.  All who had to do with Egypt gained except
+herself, and if she moved in revolt or agony, they threatened her.
+Once when resisting the pressure and the threats of war of a foreign
+diplomatist, he had, after a trying hour, written to Faith in a burst of
+passionate complaint, and his letter had ended with these words.
+
+                   "In your onward march, O men,
+                    White of face, in promise whiter,
+                    You unsheath the sword, and then
+                    Blame the wronged as the fighter.
+
+                   "Time, ah, Time, rolls onward o'er
+                    All these foetid fields of evil,
+                    While hard at the nation's core
+                    Eats the burning rust and weevill
+
+                   "Nathless, out beyond the stars
+                    Reigns the Wiser and the Stronger,
+                    Seeing in all strifes and wars
+                    Who the wronged, who the wronger."
+
+Privately he had spoken thus, but before the world he had given way to
+no impulse, in silence finding safety from the temptation to diplomatic
+evasion.  Looking back over five years, he felt now that the sum of his
+accomplishment had been small.
+
+He did not realise the truth.  When his hand was almost upon the object
+for which he had toiled and striven--whether pacifying a tribe, meeting a
+loan by honest means, building a barrage, irrigating the land, financing
+a new industry, or experimenting in cotton--it suddenly eluded him.
+Nahoum had snatched it away by subterranean wires.  On such occasions
+Nahoum would shrug his shoulders, and say with a sigh, "Ah, my friend,
+let us begin again.  We are both young; time is with us; and we will
+flourish palms in the face of Europe yet.  We have our course set by a
+bright star.  We will continue."
+
+Yet, withal, David was the true altruist.  Even now as he walked this
+road which led to his old home, dear to him beyond all else, his thoughts
+kept flying to the Nile and to the desert.
+
+Suddenly he stopped.  He was at the cross-roads.  Here he had met Kate
+Heaver, here he had shamed his neighbours--and begun his work in life.
+He stood for a moment, smiling, as he looked at the stone where he had
+sat those years ago, his hand feeling instinctively for his flute.
+Presently he turned to the dusty road again.
+
+Walking quickly away, he swung into the path of the wood which would
+bring him by a short cut to Hamley, past Soolsby's cottage.  Here was the
+old peace, the old joy of solitude among the healing trees.  Experience
+had broadened his life, had given him a vast theatre of work; but the
+smell of the woods, the touch of the turf, the whispering of the trees,
+the song of the birds, had the ancient entry to his heart.
+
+At last he emerged on the hill where Soolsby lived.  He had not meant, if
+he could help it, to speak to any one until he had entered the garden of
+the Red Mansion, but he had inadvertently come upon this place where he
+had spent the most momentous days of his life, and a feeling stronger
+than he cared to resist drew him to the open doorway.  The afternoon sun
+was beating in over the threshold as he reached it, and, at his footstep,
+a figure started forward from the shadow of a corner.
+
+It was Kate Heaver.
+
+Surprise, then pain showed in her face; she flushed, was agitated.
+
+"I am sorry.  It's too bad--it's hard on him you should see," she said in
+a breath, and turned her head away for an instant; but presently looked
+him in the face again, all trembling and eager.  "He'll be sorry enough
+to-morrow," she added solicitously, and drew away from something, she had
+been trying to hide.
+
+Then David saw.  On a bench against a wall lay old Soolsby--drunk.
+A cloud passed across his face and left it pale.
+
+"Of course," he said simply, and went over and touched the heaving
+shoulders reflectively.  "Poor Soolsby!"
+
+"He's been sober four years--over four," she said eagerly.  "When he knew
+you'd come again, he got wild, and he would have the drink in spite of
+all.  Walking from Heddington, I saw him at the tavern, and brought him
+home."
+
+"At the tavern--" David said reflectively.
+
+"The Fox and Goose, sir."  She turned her face away again, and David's
+head came up with a quick motion.  There it was, five years ago, that he
+had drunk at the bar, and had fought Jasper Kimber.
+
+"Poor fellow!" he said again, and listened to Soolsby's stertorous
+breathing, as a physician looks at a patient whose case he cannot
+control, does not wholly understand.
+
+The hand of the sleeping man was suddenly raised, his head gave a jerk,
+and he said mumblingly: "Claridge for ever!"
+
+Kate nervously intervened.  "It fair beat him, your coming back, sir.
+It's awful temptation, the drink.  I lived in it for years, and it's
+cruel hard to fight it when you're worked up either way, sorrow or joy.
+There's a real pleasure in being drunk, I'm sure.  While it lasts you're
+rich, and you're young, and you don't care what happens.  It's kind of
+you to take it like this, sir, seeing you've never been tempted and
+mightn't understand."  David shook his head sadly, and looked at Soolsby
+in silence.
+
+"I don't suppose he took a quarter what he used to take, but it made him
+drunk.  'Twas but a minute of madness.  You've saved him right enough."
+
+"I was not blaming him.  I understand--I understand."
+
+He looked at her clearly.  She was healthy and fine-looking, with large,
+eloquent eyes.  Her dress was severe and quiet, as became her occupation
+--a plain, dark grey, but the shapely fulness of the figure gave softness
+to the outlines.  It was no wonder Jasper Kimber wished to marry her;
+and, if he did, the future of the man was sure.  She had a temperament
+which might have made her an adventuress--or an opera-singer.  She had
+been touched in time, and she had never looked back.
+
+"You are with Lady Eglington now, I have heard?" he asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"It was hard for you in London at first?"
+
+She met his look steadily.  "It was easy in a way.  I could see round me
+what was the right thing to do.  Oh, that was what was so awful in the
+old life over there at Heddington,"--she pointed beyond the hill, "we
+didn't know what was good and what was bad.  The poor people in big
+working-places like Heddington ain't much better than heathens, leastways
+as to most things that matter.  They haven't got a sensible religion, not
+one that gets down into what they do.  The parson doesn't reach them--he
+talks about church and the sacraments, and they don't get at what good
+it's going to do them.  And the chapel preachers ain't much better.
+They talk and sing and pray, when what the people want is light,
+and hot water, and soap, and being shown how to live, and how to bring
+up children healthy and strong, and decent-cooked food.  I'd have food-
+hospitals if I could, and I'd give the children in the schools one good
+meal a day.  I'm sure the children of the poor go wrong and bad more
+through the way they live than anything.  If only they was taught right
+--not as though they was paupers!  Give me enough nurses of the right
+sort, and enough good, plain cooks, and meat three times a week, and milk
+and bread and rice and porridge every day, and I'd make a new place of
+any town in England in a year.  I'd--"
+
+She stopped all at once, however, and flushing, said: "I didn't stop to
+think I was talking to you, sir."
+
+"I am glad you speak to me so," he answered gently.  "You and I are both
+reformers at heart."
+
+"Me?  I've done nothing, sir, not any good to anybody or anything."
+
+"Not to Jasper Kimber?"
+
+"You did that, sir; he says so; he says you made him."
+
+A quick laugh passed David's lips.  "Men are not made so easily.  I think
+I know the trowel and the mortar that built that wall!  Thee will marry
+him, friend?"
+
+Her eyes burned as she looked at him.  She had been eternally
+dispossessed of what every woman has the right to have--one memory
+possessing the elements of beauty.  Even if it remain but for the moment,
+yet that moment is hers by right of her sex, which is denied the wider
+rights of those they love and serve.  She had tasted the cup of
+bitterness and drunk of the waters of sacrifice.  Married life had no
+lure for her.  She wanted none of it.  The seed of service had, however,
+taken root in a nature full of fire and light and power, undisciplined
+and undeveloped as it was.  She wished to do something--the spirit of
+toil, the first habit of the life of the poor, the natural medium for the
+good that may be in them, had possession of her.
+
+This man was to her the symbol of work.  To have cared for his home, to
+have looked after his daily needs, to have sheltered him humbly from
+little things, would have been her one true happiness.  And this was
+denied her.  Had she been a man, it would have been so easy.  She could
+have offered to be his servant; could have done those things which she
+could do better than any, since hers would be a heart-service.
+
+But even as she looked at him now, she had a flash of insight and
+prescience.  She had, from little things said or done, from newspapers
+marked and a hundred small indications, made up her mind that her
+mistress's mind dwelt much upon "the Egyptian."  The thought flashed now
+that she might serve this man, after all; that a day might come when she
+could say that she had played a part in his happiness, in return for all
+he had done for her.  Life had its chances--and strange things had
+happened.  In her own mind she had decided that her mistress was not
+happy, and who could tell what might happen?  Men did not live for ever!
+The thought came and went, but it left behind a determination to answer
+David as she felt.
+
+"I will not marry Jasper," she answered slowly.  "I want work, not
+marriage."
+
+"There would be both," he urged.
+
+"With women there is the one or the other, not both."
+
+"Thee could help him.  He has done credit to himself, and he can do good
+work for England.  Thee can help him."
+
+"I want work alone, not marriage, sir."
+
+"He would pay thee his debt."
+
+"He owes me nothing.  What happened was no fault of his, but of the life
+we were born in.  He tired of me, and left me.  Husbands tire of their
+wives, but stay on and beat them."
+
+"He drove thee mad almost, I remember."
+
+"Wives go mad and are never cured, so many of them.  I've seen them die,
+poor things, and leave the little ones behind.  I had the luck wi' me.
+I took the right turning at the cross-roads yonder."
+
+"Thee must be Jasper's wife if he asks thee again," he urged.
+
+"He will come when I call, but I will not call," she answered.
+
+"But still thee will marry him when the heart is ready," he persisted.
+"It shall be ready soon.  He needs thee.  Good-bye, friend.  Leave
+Soolsby alone.  He will be safe.  And do not tell him that I have seen
+him so."  He stooped over and touched the old man's shoulder gently.
+
+He held out his hand to her.  She took it, then suddenly leaned over and
+kissed it.  She could not speak.
+
+He stepped to the door and looked out.  Behind the Red Mansion the sun
+was setting, and the far garden looked cool and sweet.  He gave a happy
+sigh, and stepped out and down.
+
+As he disappeared, the woman dropped into a chair, her arms upon a table.
+Her body shook with sobs.  She sat there for an hour, and then, when the
+sun was setting, she left the drunken man sleeping, and made her way down
+the hill to the Cloistered House.  Entering, she was summoned to her
+mistress's room.  "I did not expect my lady so soon," she said,
+surprised.
+
+"No; we came sooner than we expected.  Where have you been?"
+
+"At Soolsby's hut on the hill, my lady."
+
+"Who is Soolsby?"
+
+Kate told her all she knew, and of what had happened that afternoon--but
+not all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+"THERE IS NOTHING HIDDEN WHICH SHALL NOT BE REVEALED"
+
+A fortnight had passed since they had come to Hamley--David, Eglington,
+and Hylda--and they had all travelled a long distance in mutual
+understanding during that time, too far, thought Luke Claridge, who
+remained neutral and silent.  He would not let Faith go to the Cloistered
+House, though he made no protest against David going; because he
+recognised in these visits the duty of diplomacy and the business of the
+nation--more particularly David's business, which, in his eyes, swallowed
+all.  Three times David had gone to the Cloistered House; once Hylda and
+he had met in the road leading to the old mill, and once at Soolsby's
+hut.  Twice, also, in the garden of his old home he had seen her, when
+she came to visit Faith, who had captured her heart at once.  Eglington
+and Faith had not met, however.  He was either busy in his laboratory,
+or with his books, or riding over the common and through the woods,
+and their courses lay apart.
+
+But there came an afternoon when Hylda and David were a long hour
+together at the Cloistered House.  They talked freely of his work in
+Egypt.  At last she said: "And Nahoum Pasha?"
+
+"He has kept faith."
+
+"He is in high place again?"
+
+"He is a good administrator."
+
+"You put him there!"
+
+"Thee remembers what I said to him, that night in Cairo?"
+
+Hylda closed her eyes and drew in a long breath.  Had there been a word
+spoken that night when she and David and Nahoum met which had not bitten
+into her soul!  That David had done so much in Egypt without ruin or
+death was a tribute to his power.  Nevertheless, though Nahoum had not
+struck yet, she was certain he would one day.  All that David now told
+her of the vicissitudes of his plans, and Nahoum's sympathy and help,
+only deepened this conviction.  She could well believe that Nahoum gave
+David money from his own pocket, which he replaced by extortion from
+other sources, while gaining credit with David for co-operation.
+Armenian Christian Nahoum might be, but he was ranged with the East
+against the West, with the reactionary and corrupt against advance,
+against civilisation and freedom and equality.  Nahoum's Christianity was
+permeated with Orientalism, the Christian belief obscured by the theism
+of the Muslim.  David was in a deadlier struggle than he knew.  Yet it
+could serve no good end to attempt to warn him now.  He had outlived
+peril so far; might it not be that, after all, he would win?
+
+So far she had avoided Nahoum's name in talks with David.  She could
+scarcely tell why she did, save that it opened a door better closed,
+as it were; but the restraint had given way at last.
+
+"Thee remembers what I said that night?" David repeated slowly.
+
+"I remember--I understand.  You devise your course and you never change.
+It is like building on a rock.  That is why nothing happens to you as bad
+as might happen."
+
+"Nothing bad ever happens to me."
+
+"The philosophy of the desert," she commented smiling.  "You are living
+in the desert even when you are here.  This is a dream; the desert and
+Egypt only are real.
+
+"That is true, I think.  I seem sometimes like a sojourner here, like a
+spirit 'revisiting the scenes of life and time.'"  He laughed boyishly.
+
+"Yet you are happy here.  I understand now why and how you are what you
+are.  Even I that have been here so short a time feel the influence upon
+me.  I breathe an air that, somehow, seems a native air.  The spirit of
+my Quaker grandmother revives in me.  Sometimes I sit hours thinking,
+scarcely stirring; and I believe I know now how people might speak to
+each other without words.  Your Uncle Benn and you--it was so with you,
+was it not?  You heard his voice speaking to you sometimes; you
+understood what he meant to say to you?  You told me so long ago."
+
+David inclined his head.  "I heard him speak as one might speak through
+a closed door.  Sometimes, too, in the desert I have heard Faith speak
+to me."
+
+"And your grandfather?"
+
+"Never my grandfather--never.  It would seem as though, in my thoughts,
+I could never reach him; as though masses of opaque things lay between.
+Yet he and I--there is love between us.  I don't know why I never hear
+him."
+
+"Tell me of your childhood, of your mother.  I have seen her grave under
+the ash by the Meeting-house, but I want to know of her from you."
+
+"Has not Faith told you?"
+
+"We have only talked of the present.  I could not ask her; but I can ask
+you.  I want to know of your mother and you together."
+
+"We were never together.  When I opened my eyes she closed hers.  It was
+so little to get for the life she gave.  See, was it not a good face?"
+He drew from his pocket a little locket which Faith had given him years
+ago, and opened it before her.
+
+Hylda looked long.  "She was exquisite," she said, "exquisite."
+
+"My father I never knew either.  He was a captain of a merchant ship.
+He married her secretly while she was staying with an aunt at Portsmouth.
+He sailed away, my mother told my grandfather all, and he brought her
+home here.  The marriage was regular, of course, but my grandfather,
+after announcing it, and bringing it before the Elders, declared that she
+should never see her husband again.  She never did, for she died a few
+months after, when I came, and my father died very soon, also.  I never
+saw him, and I do not know if he ever tried to see me.  I never had any
+feeling about it.  My grandfather was the only father I ever knew, and
+Faith, who was born a year before me, became like a sister to me, though
+she soon made other pretensions!"  He laughed again, almost happily.
+"To gain an end she exercised authority as my aunt!"
+
+"What was your father's name?"
+
+"Fetherdon--James Fetherdon."
+
+"Fetherdon--James Fetherdon !"  Involuntarily Hylda repeated the name
+after him.  Where had she heard the name before--or where had she seen
+it?  It kept flashing before her eyes.  Where had she seen it?  For days
+she had been rummaging among old papers in the library of the Cloistered
+House, and in an old box full of correspondence and papers of the late
+countess, who had died suddenly.  Was it among them that she had seen the
+name?  She could not tell.  It was all vague, but that she had seen it or
+heard it she was sure.
+
+"Your father's people, you never knew them?"
+
+He shook his head.  "Nor of them.  Here was my home--I had no desire to
+discover them.  We draw in upon ourselves here."
+
+"There is great force in such a life and such a people," she answered.
+"If the same concentration of mind could be carried into the wide life of
+the world, we might revolutionise civilisation; or vitalise and advance
+it, I mean--as you are doing in Egypt."
+
+"I have done nothing in Egypt.  I have sounded the bugle--I have not had
+my fight."
+
+"That is true in a sense," she replied.  "Your real struggle is before
+you.  I do not know why I say it, but I do say it; I feel it.  Something
+here"--she pressed her hand to her heart--"something here tells me that
+your day of battle is yet to come."  Her eyes were brimming and full of
+excitement.  "We must all help you."  She gained courage with each word.
+"You must not fight alone.  You work for civilisation; you must have
+civilisation behind you."  Her hands clasped nervously; there was a catch
+in her throat.  "You remember then, that I said I would call to you one
+day, as your Uncle Benn did, and you should hear and answer me.  It shall
+not be that I will call.  You--you will call, and I will help you if I
+can.  I will help, no matter what may seem to prevent, if there is
+anything I can do.  I, surely I, of all the world owe it to you to do
+what I can, always.
+
+"I owe so much--you did so much.  Oh, how it haunts me!  Sometimes in the
+night I wake with a start and see it all--all!"
+
+The flood which had been dyked back these years past had broken loose in
+her heart.
+
+Out of the stir and sweep of social life and duty, of official and
+political ambition-heart-hungry, for she had no child; heart-lonely,
+though she had scarce recognised it in the duties and excitements round
+her--she had floated suddenly into this backwater of a motionless life in
+Hamley.  Its quiet had settled upon her, the shackles of her spirit had
+been loosed, and dropped from her; she had suddenly bathed her heart and
+soul in a freer atmosphere than they had ever known before.  And David
+and Hamley had come together.  The old impulses, dominated by a divine
+altruism, were swinging her out upon a course leading she knew not,
+reeked not, whither--for the moment reeked not.  This man's career, the
+work he was set to do, the ideal before him, the vision of a land
+redeemed, captured her, carried her panting into a resolve which, however
+she might modify her speech or action, must be an influence in her life
+hereafter.  Must the penance and the redemption be his only?  This life
+he lived had come from what had happened to her and to him in Egypt.
+In a deep sense her life was linked with his.
+
+In a flash David now felt the deep significance of their relations.
+A curtain seemed suddenly to have been drawn aside.  He was blinded for
+a moment.  Her sympathy, her desire to help, gave him a new sense of hope
+and confidence, but--but there was no room in his crusade for any woman;
+the dear egotism of a life-dream was masterful in him, possessed him.
+
+Yet, if ever his heart might have dwelt upon a woman with thought of the
+future, this being before him--he drew himself up with a start!  .  .  .
+He was going to Egypt again in a few days; they might probably never meet
+again--would not, no doubt--should not.  He had pressed her husband to go
+to Egypt, but now he would not encourage it; he must "finish his journey
+alone."
+
+He looked again in her eyes, and their light and beauty held him.  His
+own eyes swam.  The exaltation of a great idea was upon them, was a bond
+of fate between them.  It was a moment of peril not fully realised by
+either.  David did realise, however, that she was beautiful beyond all
+women he had ever seen--or was he now for the first time really aware of
+the beauty of woman?  She had an expression, a light of eye and face,
+finely alluring beyond mere outline of feature.  Yet the features were
+there, too, regular and fine; and her brown hair waving away from her
+broad, white forehead over eyes a greyish violet in colour gave her a
+classic distinction.  In the quietness of the face there was that strain
+of the Quaker, descending to her through three generations, yet enlivened
+by a mind of impulse and genius.
+
+They stood looking at each other for a moment, in which both had taken a
+long step forward in life's experience.  But presently his eyes looked
+beyond her, as though at something that fascinated them.
+
+"Of what are you thinking?  What do you see?" she asked.
+
+"You, leaving the garden of my house in Cairo, I standing by the fire,"
+he answered, closing his eyes for an instant.
+
+"It is what I saw also," she said breathlessly.  "It is what I saw and
+was thinking of that instant."  When, as though she must break away from
+the cords of feeling drawing her nearer and nearer to him, she said, with
+a little laugh, "Tell me again of my Chicago cousin?  I have not had a
+letter for a year."
+
+"Lacey, he is with me always.  I should have done little had it not been
+for him.  He has remarkable resource; he is never cast down.  He has but
+one fault."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"He is no respecter of persons.  His humour cuts deep.  He has a wide
+heart for your sex.  When leaving the court of the King of Abyssinia he
+said to his Majesty: 'Well, good-bye, King.  Give my love to the girls.'"
+
+She laughed again.  "How absurd and childish he is!  But he is true and
+able.  And how glad you should be that you are able to make true friends,
+without an effort.  Yesterday I met neighbour Fairley, and another little
+old Elder who keeps his chin in his collar and his eyes on the sky.  They
+did little else but sing your praises.  One might have thought that you
+had invented the world-or Hamley."
+
+"Yet they would chafe if I were to appear among them without these."  He
+glanced down at the Quaker clothes he wore, and made a gesture towards
+the broadbrimmed hat reposing on a footstool near by.
+
+"It is good to see that you are not changed, not spoiled at all," she
+remarked, smiling.  "Though, indeed, how could you be, who always work
+for others and never for yourself?  All I envy you is your friends.  You
+make them and keep them so."
+
+She sighed, and a shadow came into her eyes suddenly.  She was thinking
+of Eglington.  Did he make friends--true friends?  In London--was there
+one she knew who would cleave to him for love of him?  In England--had
+she ever seen one?  In Hamley, where his people had been for so many
+generations, had she found one?
+
+Herself?  Yes, she was his true friend.  She would do what would she not
+do to help him, to serve his interests?  What had she not done since she
+married Her fortune, it was his; her every waking hour had been filled
+with something devised to help him on his way.  Had he ever said to her:
+"Hylda, you are a help to me"?  He had admired her--but was he singular
+in that?  Before she married there were many--since, there had been many
+--who had shown, some with tact and carefulness, others with a crudeness
+making her shudder, that they admired her; and, if they might, would have
+given their admiration another name with other manifestations.  Had she
+repelled it all?  She had been too sure of herself to draw her skirts
+about her; she was too proud to let any man put her at any disadvantage.
+She had been safe, because her heart had been untouched.  The Duchess of
+Snowdon, once beautiful, but now with a face like a mask, enamelled and
+rouged and lifeless, had said to her once: "My dear, I ought to have died
+at thirty.  When I was twenty-three I wanted to squeeze the orange dry in
+a handful of years, and then go out suddenly, and let the dust of
+forgetfulness cover my bones.  I had one child, a boy, and would have no
+more; and I squeezed the orange!  But I didn't go at thirty, and yet the
+orange was dry.  My boy died; and you see what I am--a fright, I know it;
+and I dress like a child of twenty; and I can't help it."
+
+There had been moments, once, when Hylda, too, had wished to squeeze the
+orange dry, but something behind, calling to her, had held her back.  She
+had dropped her anchor in perilous seas, but it had never dragged.
+
+"Tell me how to make friends--and keep them," she added gaily.
+
+"If it be true I make friends, thee taught me how," he answered, "for
+thee made me a friend, and I forget not the lesson."
+
+She smiled.  "Thee has learnt another lesson too well," she answered
+brightly.  "Thee must not flatter.  It is not that which makes thee keep
+friends.  Thee sees I also am speaking as they do in Hamley--am I not
+bold?  I love the grammarless speech."
+
+"Then use it freely to-day, for this is farewell," he answered, not
+looking at her.
+
+"This--is--farewell," she said slowly, vaguely.  Why should it startle
+her so?  "You are going so soon--where?"
+
+"To-morrow to London, next week to Egypt."
+
+She laid a hand upon herself, for her heart was beating violently.  "Thee
+is not fair to give no warning--there is so much to say," she said, in so
+low a tone that he could scarcely hear her.  "There is the future, your
+work, what we are to do here to help.  What I am to do.
+
+"Thee will always be a friend to Egypt, I know," he answered.  "She needs
+friends.  Thee has a place where thee can help."
+
+"Will not right be done without my voice?" she asked, her eyes half
+closing.  "There is the Foreign Office, and English policy, and the
+ministers, and--and Eglington.  What need of me?"
+
+He saw the thought had flashed into her mind that he did not trust her
+husband.  "Thee knows and cares for Egypt, and knowing and caring make
+policy easier to frame," he rejoined.
+
+Suddenly a wave of feeling went over her.  He whose life had been flung
+into this field of labour by an act of her own, who should help him but
+herself?
+
+But it all baffled her, hurt her, shook her.  She was not free to help as
+she wished.  Her life belonged to another; and he exacted the payment of
+tribute to the uttermost farthing.  She was blinded by the thought.  Yet
+she must speak.  "I will come to Egypt--we will come to Egypt," she said
+quickly.  "Eglington shall know, too; he shall understand.  You shall
+have his help.  You shall not work alone."
+
+"Thee can work here," he said.  "It may not be easy for Lord Eglington to
+come."
+
+"You pressed it on him."
+
+Their eyes met.  She suddenly saw what was in his mind.
+
+"You know best what will help you most," she added gently.
+
+"You will not come?" he asked.
+
+"I will not say I will not come--not ever," she answered firmly.  "It may
+be I should have to come."  Resolution was in her eyes.  She was thinking
+of Nahoum.  "I may have to come," she added after a pause, "to do right
+by you."
+
+He read her meaning.  "Thee will never come," he continued confidently.
+He held out his hand.  "Perhaps I shall see you in town," she rejoined,
+as her hand rested in his, and she looked away.  "When do you start for
+Egypt?"
+
+"To-morrow week, I think," he answered.  "There is much to do."
+
+"Perhaps we shall meet in town," she repeated.  But they both knew they
+would not.
+
+"Farewell," he said, and picked up his hat.
+
+As he turned again, the look in her eyes brought the blood to his face,
+then it became pale.  A new force had come into his life.
+
+"God be good to thee," he said, and turned away.
+
+She watched him leave the room and pass through the garden.
+
+"David!  David!" she said softly after him.
+
+At the other end of the room her husband, who had just entered, watched
+her.  He heard her voice, but did not hear what she said.
+
+"Come, Hylda, and have some music," he said brusquely.
+
+She scrutinised him calmly.  His face showed nothing.  His look was
+enigmatical.
+
+"Chopin is the thing for me," he said, and opened the piano.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+AS IN A GLASS DARKLY
+
+It was very quiet and cool in the Quaker Meeting-house, though outside
+there was the rustle of leaves, the low din of the bees, the whistle of a
+bird, or the even tread of horses' hoofs as they journeyed on the London
+road.  The place was full.  For a half-hour the worshippers had sat
+voiceless.  They were waiting for the spirit to move some one to speak.
+As they waited, a lady entered and glided into a seat.  Few saw, and
+these gave no indication of surprise, though they were little used to
+strangers, and none of the name borne by this lady had entered the
+building for many years.  It was Hylda.
+
+At last the silence was broken.  The wizened Elder, with eyes upon the
+ceiling and his long white chin like ivory on his great collar, began to
+pray, sitting where he was, his hands upon his knees.  He prayed for all
+who wandered "into by and forbidden paths."  He prayed for one whose work
+was as that of Joseph, son of Jacob; whose footsteps were now upon the
+sea, and now upon the desert; whose way was set among strange gods and
+divers heresies--"'For there must also be heresies, that they which are
+approved may be made manifest among the weak.'"  A moment more, and then
+he added: "He hath been tried beyond his years; do Thou uphold his hands.
+Once with a goad did we urge him on, when in ease and sloth he was among
+us, but now he spurreth on his spirit and body in too great haste.  O put
+Thy hand upon the bridle, Lord, that He ride soberly upon Thy business."
+
+There was a longer silence now, but at last came the voice of Luke
+Claridge.
+
+"Father of the fatherless," he said, "my days are as the sands in the
+hour-glass hastening to their rest; and my place will soon be empty.  He
+goeth far, and I may not go with him.  He fighteth alone, like him that
+strove with wild beasts at Ephesus; do Thou uphold him that he may bring
+a nation captive.  And if a viper fasten on his hand, as chanced to Paul
+of old, give him grace to strike it off without hurt.  O Lord, he is to
+me, Thy servant, as the one ewe lamb; let him be Thine when Thou
+gatherest for Thy vineyard!"
+
+"And if a viper fasten on his hand--" David passed his hand across his
+forehead and closed his eyes.  The beasts at Ephesus he had fought, and
+he would fight them again--there was fighting enough to do in the land of
+Egypt.  And the viper would fasten on his hand--it had fastened on his
+hand, and he had struck it off; but it would come again, the dark thing
+against which he had fought in the desert.
+
+Their prayers had unnerved him, had got into that corner of his nature
+where youth and its irresponsibility loitered yet.  For a moment he was
+shaken, and then, looking into the faces of the Elders, said: "Friends, I
+go again upon paths that lead into the wilderness.  I know not if I ever
+shall return.  Howsoe'er that may be, I shall walk with firmer step
+because of all ye do for me."
+
+He closed his eyes and prayed: "O God, I go into the land of ancient
+plagues and present pestilence.  If it be Thy will, bring me home to this
+good land, when my task is done.  If not, by Thy goodness let me be as a
+stone set by the wayside for others who come after; and save me from the
+beast and from the viper.  'Thou art faithful, who wilt not suffer us to
+be tempted above that we are able; but wilt with the temptation also make
+a way of escape, that we may be able to bear it!'"
+
+He sat down, and all grew silent again; but suddenly some one sobbed
+aloud-sobbed, and strove to stay the sobbing, and could not, and, getting
+up, hastened towards the door.
+
+It was Faith.  David heard, and came quickly after her.  As he took her
+arm gently, his eyes met those of Hylda.  She rose and came out also.
+
+"Will thee take her home?" he said huskily.  "I can bear no more."
+
+Hylda placed her arm round Faith, and led her out under the trees and
+into the wood.  As they went, Faith looked back.
+
+"Oh, forgive me, forgive me, Davy," she said softly.
+
+Three lights burned in Hamley: one in the Red Mansion, one in the
+Cloistered House, and one in Soolsby's hut upon the hill.  In the Red
+Mansion old Luke Claridge, his face pale with feeling, his white hair
+tumbling about, his head thrust forward, his eyes shining, sat listening,
+as Faith read aloud letters which Benn Claridge had written from the East
+many years before.  One letter, written from Bagdad, he made her read
+twice.  The faded sheet had in it the glow and glamour of the East; it
+was like a heart beating with life; emotion rose and fell in it like the
+waves of the sea.  Once the old man interrupted Faith.
+
+"Davy--it is as though Davy spoke.  It is like Davy--both Claridge, both
+Claridge," he said.  "But is it not like Davy?  Davy is doing what it was
+in Benn's heart to do.  Benn showed the way; Benn called, and Davy came."
+
+He laid both hands upon his knees and raised his eyes.  "O Lord, I have
+sought to do according to Thy will," he whispered.  He was thinking of a
+thing he had long hidden.  Through many years he had no doubt, no qualm;
+but, since David had gone to Egypt, some spirit of unquiet had worked in
+him.  He had acted against the prayer of his own wife, lying in her
+grave--a quiet-faced woman, who had never crossed him, who had never
+shown a note of passion in all her life, save in one thing concerning
+David.  Upon it, like some prophetess, she had flamed out.  With the
+insight which only women have where children are concerned, she had told
+him that he would live to repent of what he had done.  She had died soon
+after, and was laid beside the deserted young mother, whose days had
+budded and blossomed, and fallen like petals to the ground, while yet it
+was the spring.
+
+Luke Claridge had understood neither, not his wife when she had said:
+"Thee should let the Lord do His own work, Luke," nor his dying daughter
+Mercy, whose last words had been: "With love and sorrow I have sowed; he
+shall reap rejoicing--my babe.  Thee will set him in the garden in the
+sun, where God may find him--God will not pass him by.  He will take him
+by the hand and lead him home."  The old man had thought her touched by
+delirium then, though her words were but the parable of a mind fed by the
+poetry of life, by a shy spirit, to which meditation gave fancy and
+farseeing.  David had come by his idealism honestly.  The half-mystical
+spirit of his Uncle Benn had flowed on to another generation through the
+filter of a woman's sad soul.  It had come to David a pure force, a
+constructive and practical idealism.
+
+Now, as Faith read, there were ringing in the old man's ears the words
+which David's mother had said before she closed her eyes and passed away:
+"Set him in the garden in the sun, where God may find him--God will not
+pass him by."  They seemed to weave themselves into the symbolism of Benn
+Claridge's letter, written from the hills of Bagdad.
+
+"But," the letter continued, "the Governor passed by with his suite, the
+buckles of the harness of his horses all silver, his carriage shining
+with inlay of gold, his turban full of precious stones.  When he had
+passed, I said to a shepherd standing by, 'If thou hadst all his wealth,
+shepherd, what wouldst thou do?' and he answered, 'If I had his wealth, I
+would sit on the south side of my house in the sun all day and every
+day.'  To a messenger of the Palace, who must ever be ready night and day
+to run at his master's order, I asked the same.  He replied, 'If I had
+all the Effendina's wealth, I would sleep till I died.'  To a blind
+beggar, shaking the copper in his cup in the highways, pleading dumbly to
+those who passed, I made similar inquisition, and he replied 'If the
+wealth of the exalted one were mine, I would sit on the mastaba by the
+bake-house, and eat three times a day, save at Ramadan, when I would
+bless Allah the compassionate and merciful, and breakfast at sunset with
+the flesh of a kid and a dish of dates.'  To a woman at the door of a
+tomb hung with relics of hundreds of poor souls in misery, who besought
+the buried saint to intercede for her with Allah, I made the same
+catechism, and she answered, 'Oh, effendi, if his wealth were mine,
+I would give my son what he has lost.'  'What has he lost, woman?' said
+I; and she answered: 'A little house with a garden, and a flock of ten
+goats, a cow and a dovecote, his inheritance of which he has been
+despoiled by one who carried a false debt 'gainst his dead father.'  And
+I said to her: 'But if thy wealth were as that of the ruler of the city,
+thy son would have no need of the little house and garden and the flock
+of goats, and a cow and a dovecote.'  Whereupon she turned upon me in
+bitterness, and said: 'Were they not his own as the seed of his father?
+Shall not one cherish that which is his own, which cometh from seed to
+seed?  Is it not the law?'  'But,' said I, 'if his wealth were thine,
+there would be herds of cattle, and flocks of sheep, and carpets spread,
+and the banquet-tables, and great orchards.'  But she stubbornly shook
+her head.  'Where the eagle built shall not the young eagle nest?  How
+should God meet me in the way and bless him who stood not by his birth
+right?  The plot of ground was the lad's, and all that is thereon.
+I pray thee, mock me not.'  God knows I did not mock her, for her words
+were wisdom.  So did it work upon me that, after many days, I got for the
+lad his own again, and there he is happier, and his mother happier, than
+the Governor in his palace.  Later I did learn some truths from the
+shepherd, the messenger, and the beggar, and the woman with the child;
+but chiefly from the woman and the child.  The material value has no
+relation to the value each sets upon that which is his own.  Behind this
+feeling lies the strength of the world.  Here on this hill of Bagdad I am
+thinking these things.  And, Luke, I would have thee also think on my
+story of the woman and the child.  There is in it a lesson for thee."
+
+When Luke Claridge first read this letter years before, he had put it
+from him sternly.  Now he heard it with a soft emotion.  He took the
+letter from Faith at last and put it in his pocket.  With no apparent
+relevancy, and laying his hand on Faith's shoulder, he said:
+
+"We have done according to our conscience by Davy--God is our witness,
+so!"
+
+She leaned her cheek against his hand, but did not speak.
+
+In Soolsby's hut upon the hill David sat talking to the old chair-maker.
+Since his return he had visited the place several times, only to find
+Soolsby absent.  The old man, on awaking from his drunken sleep, had been
+visited by a terrible remorse, and, whenever he had seen David coming,
+had fled into the woods.  This evening, however, David came in the dark,
+and Soolsby was caught.
+
+When David entered first, the old man broke down.  He could not speak,
+but leaned upon the back of a chair, and though his lips moved, no sound
+came forth.  But David took him by the shoulders and set him down, and
+laughed gently in his face, and at last Soolsby got voice and said:
+
+"Egyptian!  O Egyptian!"
+
+Then his tongue was loosened and his eye glistened, and he poured out
+question after question, many pertinent, some whimsical, all frankly
+answered by David.  But suddenly he stopped short, and his eyes sank
+before the other, who had laid a hand upon his knee.
+
+"But don't, Egyptian, don't!  Don't have aught to do with me.  I'm only a
+drunken swine.  I kept sober four years, as she knows--as the Angel down
+yonder in the Red Mansion knows; but the day you came, going out to meet
+you, I got drunk--blind drunk.  I had only been pretending all the time.
+I was being coaxed along--made believe I was a real man, I suppose.  But
+I wasn't.  I was a pillar of sand.  When pressure came I just broke down
+--broke down, Egyptian.  Don't be surprised if you hear me grunt.  It's
+my natural speech.  I'm a hog, a drink-swilling hog.  I wasn't decent
+enough to stay sober till you had said 'Good day,' and 'How goes it,
+Soolsby?' I tried it on; it was no good.  I began to live like a man, but
+I've slipped back into the ditch.  You didn't know that, did you?"
+
+David let him have his say, and then in a low voice said: "Yes, I knew
+thee had been drinking, Soolsby."  He started.  "She told you--Kate
+Heaver--"
+
+"She did not tell me.  I came and found you here with her.  You were
+asleep."
+
+"A drunken sweep!"  He spat upon the ground in disgust at himself.
+
+"I ought never have comeback here," he added.  "It was no place for me.
+But it drew me.  I didn't belong; but it drew me."
+
+"Thee belongs to Hamley.  Thee is an honour to Hamley, Soolsby."
+
+Soolsby's eyes widened; the blurred look of rage and self-reproach in
+them began to fade away.
+
+"Thee has made a fight, Soolsby, to conquer a thing that has had thee by
+the throat.  There's no fighting like it.  It means a watching every
+hour, every minute--thee can never take the eye off it.  Some days it's
+easy, some days it's hard, but it's never so easy that you can say,
+'There is no need to watch.'  In sleep it whispers and wakes you; in the
+morning, when there are no shadows, it casts a shadow on the path.  It
+comes between you and your work; you see it looking out of the eyes of a
+friend.  And one day, when you think it has been conquered, that you have
+worn it down into oblivion and the dust, and you close your eyes and say,
+'I am master,' up it springs with fury from nowhere you can see, and
+catches you by the throat; and the fight begins again.  But you sit
+stronger, and the fight becomes shorter; and after many battles, and you
+have learned never to be off guard, to know by instinct where every
+ambush is, then at last the victory is yours.  It is hard, it is bitter,
+and sometimes it seems hardly worth the struggle.  But it is--it is worth
+the struggle, dear old man."
+
+Soolsby dropped on his knees and caught David by the arms.  "How did you
+know-how did you know?" he asked hoarsely.  "It's been just as you say.
+You've watched some one fighting?"
+
+"I have watched some one fighting--fighting," answered David clearly, but
+his eyes were moist.
+
+"With drink, the same as me?"
+
+"No, with opium--laudanum."
+
+"Oh, I've heard that's worse, that it makes you mad, the wanting it."
+
+"I have seen it so."
+
+"Did the man break down like me?"
+
+"Only once, but the fight is not yet over with him."  "Was he--an
+Englishman?"
+
+David inclined his head.  "It's a great thing to have a temptation to
+fight, Soolsby.  Then we can understand others."
+
+"It's not always true, Egyptian, for you have never had temptation to
+fight.  Yet you know it all."
+
+"God has been good to me," David answered, putting a hand on the old
+man's shoulder.  "And thee is a credit to Hamley, friend.  Thee will
+never fall again."
+
+"You know that--you say that to me!  Then, by Mary the mother of God, I
+never will be a swine again," he said, getting to his feet.
+
+"Well, good-bye, Soolsby.  I go to-morrow," David said presently.
+
+Soolsby frowned; his lips worked.  "When will you come back?" he asked
+eagerly.
+
+David smiled.  "There is so much to do, they may not let me come--not
+soon.  I am going into the desert again."
+
+Soolsby was shaking.  He spoke huskily.  "Here is your place," he said.
+"You shall come back--Oh, but you shall come back, here, where you
+belong."
+
+David shook his head and smiled, and clasped the strong hand again.  A
+moment later he was gone.  From the door of the but Soolsby muttered to
+himself:
+
+"I will bring you back.  If Luke Claridge doesn't, then I will bring you
+back.  If he dies, I will bring you--no, by the love of God, I will bring
+you back while he lives!"
+
+                    ...........................
+
+Two thousand miles away, in a Nile village, women sat wailing in dark
+doorways, dust on their heads, black mantles covering their faces.  By
+the pond where all the people drank, performed their ablutions, bathed
+their bodies and rinsed their mouths, sat the sheikh-el-beled, the
+village chief, taking counsel in sorrow with the barber, the holy man,
+and others.  Now speaking, now rocking their bodies to and fro, in the
+evening sunlight, they sat and watched the Nile in flood covering the
+wide wastes of the Fayoum, spreading over the land rich deposits of earth
+from the mountains of Abyssinia.  When that flood subsided there would be
+fields to be planted with dourha and onions and sugar-cane; but they
+whose strong arms should plough and sow and wield the sickle, the youth,
+the upstanding ones, had been carried off in chains to serve in the army
+of Egypt, destined for the far Soudan, for hardship, misery, and death,
+never to see their kindred any more.  Twice during three months had the
+dread servant of the Palace come and driven off their best like sheep to
+the slaughter.  The brave, the stalwart, the bread-winners, were gone;
+and yet the tax-gatherer would come and press for every impost--on the
+onion-field, the date-palm, the dourha-field, and the clump of sugar-
+cane, as though the young men, the toilers, were still there.  The old
+and infirm, the children, the women, must now double and treble their
+labour.  The old men must go to the corvee, and mend the banks of the
+Nile for the Prince and his pashas, providing their own food, their own
+tools, their own housing, if housing there would be--if it was more than
+sleeping under a bush by the riverside, or crawling into a hole in the
+ground, their yeleks their clothes by day, their only covering at night.
+
+They sat like men without hope, yet with the proud, bitter mien of those
+who had known good and had lost it, had seen content and now were
+desolate.
+
+Presently one--a lad--the youngest of them, lifted up his voice and began
+to chant a recitative, while another took a small drum and beat it in
+unison.  He was but just recovered from an illness, or he had gone also
+in chains to die for he knew not what, leaving behind without hope all
+that he loved:
+
+         "How has the cloud fallen, and the leaf withered on the tree,
+          The lemon-tree, that standeth by the door.
+          The melon and the date have gone bitter to the taste,
+          The weevil, it has eaten at the core
+          The core of my heart, the mildew findeth it.
+          My music, it is but the drip of tears,
+          The garner empty standeth, the oven hath no fire,
+          Night filleth me with fears.
+          O Nile that floweth deeply, hast thou not heard his voice?
+          His footsteps hast thou covered with thy flood?
+          He was as one who lifteth up the yoke,
+          He was as one who taketh off the chain,
+          As one who sheltereth from the rain,
+          As one who scattereth bread to the pigeons flying.
+          His purse was at his side, his mantle was for me,
+          For any who passeth were his mantle and his purse,
+          And now like a gourd is he withered from our eyes.
+          His friendship, it was like a shady wood
+          Whither has he gone?--Who shall speak for us?
+          Who shall save us from the kourbash and the stripes?
+          Who shall proclaim us in the palace?
+          Who shall contend for us in the gate?
+          The sakkia turneth no more; the oxen they are gone;
+          The young go forth in chains, the old waken in the night,
+          They waken and weep, for the wheel turns backward,
+          And the dark days are come again upon us--
+          Will he return no more?
+          His friendship was like a shady wood,
+          O Nile that floweth deeply, hast thou not heard his voice?
+          Hast thou covered up his footsteps with thy flood?
+          The core of my heart, the mildew findeth it!"
+
+Another-an old man-took up the strain, as the drum kept time to the beat
+of the voice with its undulating call and refrain:
+
+"When his footsteps were among us there was peace;
+War entered not the village, nor the call of war.
+Now our homes are as those that have no roofs.
+As a nest decayed, as a cave forsaken,
+As a ship that lieth broken on the beach,
+Is the house where we were born.
+Out in the desert did we bury our gold,
+We buried it where no man robbed us, for his arm was strong.
+Now are the jars empty, gold did not avail
+To save our young men, to keep them from the chains.
+God hath swallowed his voice, or the sea hath drowned it,
+Or the Nile hath covered him with its flood;
+Else would he come when our voices call.
+His word was honey in the prince's ear
+Will he return no more?"
+
+And now the sheikh-el-beled spoke.  "It hath been so since Nahoum Pasha
+passed this way four months agone.  He hath changed all.  War will not
+avail.  David Pasha, he will come again.  His word is as the centre of
+the world.  Ye have no hope, because ye see the hawks among the starving
+sheep.  But the shepherd will return from behind the hill, and the hawks
+will flee away.
+
+".  .  .  Behold, once was I in the desert.  Listen, for mine are the
+words of one who hath travelled far--was I not at Damascus and Palmyra
+and Bagdad, and at Medina by the tomb of Mahomet?"
+
+Reverently he touched the green turban on his head, evidence of his
+journey to Mahomet's tomb.  "Once in the desert I saw afar off an oasis
+of wood and water, and flying things, and houses where a man might rest.
+And I got me down from my camel, and knelt upon my sheepskin, and gave
+thanks in the name of Allah.  Thereupon I mounted again and rode on
+towards that goodly place.  But as I rode it vanished from my sight.
+Then did I mourn.  Yet once again I saw the trees, and flocks of pigeons
+and waving fields, and I was hungry and thirsty, and longed exceedingly.
+Yet got I down, and, upon my sheep-skin, once more gave thanks to Allah.
+And I mounted thereafter in haste and rode on; but once again was I
+mocked.  Then I cried aloud in my despair.  It was in my heart to die
+upon the sheep-skin where I had prayed; for I was burned up within, and
+there seemed naught to do but say malaish, and go hence.  But that goodly
+sight came again.  My heart rebelled that I should be so mocked.  I bent
+down my head upon my camel that I might not see, yet once more I loosed
+the sheep-skin.  Lifting up my heart, I looked again, and again I took
+hope and rode on.  Farther and farther I rode, and lo!  I was no longer
+mocked; for I came to a goodly place of water and trees, and was saved.
+So shall it be with us.  We have looked for his coming again, and our
+hearts have fallen and been as ashes, for that he has not come.  Yet
+there be mirages, and one day soon David Pasha will come hither, and our
+pains shall be eased."
+
+"Aiwa, aiwa--yes, yes," cried the lad who had sung to them.
+
+"Aiwa, aiwa," rang softly over the pond, where naked children stooped to
+drink.
+
+The smell of the cooking-pots floated out from the mud-houses near by.
+
+"Malaish," said one after another, "I am hungry.  He will come again-
+perhaps to-morrow."  So they moved towards the houses over the way.
+
+One cursed his woman for wailing in the doorway; one snatched the lid
+from a cooking-pot; one drew from an oven cakes of dourha, and gave them
+to those who had none; one knelt and bowed his forehead to the ground in
+prayer; one shouted the name of him whose coming they desired.
+
+So was David missed in Egypt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE TENTS OF CUSHAN
+
+          "I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction, and the curtains
+          of the Land of Midian did tremble."
+
+A Hurdy-Gurdy was standing at the corner, playing with shrill insistence
+a medley of Scottish airs.  Now "Loch Lomond" pleaded for pennies from
+the upper windows:
+
+              "For you'll tak' the high road,
+               and I'll tak' the low road,
+               And I'll be in Scotland before ye:
+               But I and my true love will never meet again,
+               On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond!"
+
+The hurdy-gurdy was strident and insistent, but for a long time no
+response came.  At last, however, as the strains of "Loch Lomond" ceased,
+a lady appeared on the balcony of a drawing-room, and, leaning over a
+little forest of flowers and plants, threw a half-crown to the sorry
+street-musician.  She watched the grotesque thing trundle away, then
+entering the house again, took a 'cello from the corner of the room and
+tuned the instrument tenderly.  It was Hylda.
+
+Something of the peace of Hamley had followed her to London, but the
+poignant pain of it had come also.  Like Melisande, she had looked into
+the quiet pool of life and had seen her own face, its story and its
+foreshadowings.  Since then she had been "apart."  She had watched life
+move on rather than shared in its movement.  Things stood still for her.
+That apathy of soul was upon her which follows the inward struggle that
+exhausts the throb and fret of inward emotions, leaving the mind
+dominant, the will in abeyance.
+
+She had become conscious that her fate and future were suspended over a
+chasm, as, on the trapeze of a balloon, an adventurous aeronaut hangs
+uncertain over the hungry sea, waiting for the coming wind which will
+either blow the hazardous vessel to its doom or to safe refuge on the
+land.
+
+She had not seen David after he left Hamley.  Their last words had been
+spoken at the Meeting-house, when he gave Faith to her care.  That scene
+came back to her now, and a flush crept slowly over her face and faded
+away again.  She was recalling, too, the afternoon of that day when she
+and David had parted in the drawing-room of the Cloistered House, and
+Eglington had asked her to sing.  She thought of the hours with Eglington
+that followed, first at the piano and afterwards in the laboratory, where
+in his long blue smock he made experiments.  Had she not been conscious
+of something enigmatical in his gaiety that afternoon, in his cheerful
+yet cheerless words, she would have been deeply impressed by his
+appreciation of her playing, and his keen reflections on the merits of
+the composers; by his still keener attention to his subsequent
+experiments, and his amusing comments upon them.  But, somehow, that very
+cheerless cheerfulness seemed to proclaim him superficial.  Though she
+had no knowledge of science, she instinctively doubted his earnestness
+even in this work, which certainly was not pursued for effect.  She had
+put the feeling from her, but it kept returning.  She felt that in
+nothing did he touch the depths.  Nothing could possess him wholly;
+nothing inherent could make him self-effacing.
+
+Yet she wondered, too, if she was right, when she saw his fox-terrier
+watching him, ever watching him with his big brown eyes as he buoyantly
+worked, and saw him stoop to pat its head.  Or was this, after all, mere
+animalism, mere superficial vitality, love of health and being?  She
+shuddered, and shut her eyes, for it came home to her that to him she was
+just such a being of health, vitality and comeliness, on a little higher
+plane.  She put the thought from her, but it had had its birth, and it
+would not down.  He had immense vitality, he was tireless, and abundant
+in work and industry; he went from one thing to another with ease and
+swiftly changing eagerness.  Was it all mere force--mere man and mind?
+Was there no soul behind it?  There in the laboratory she had laid her
+hand on the terrier, and prayed in her heart that she might understand
+him for her own good, her own happiness, and his.  Above all else she
+wanted to love him truly, and to be loved truly, and duty was to her a
+daily sacrifice, a constant memorial.  She realised to the full that
+there lay before her a long race unilluminated by the sacred lamp which,
+lighted at the altar, should still be burning beside the grave.
+
+Now, as she thought of him, she kept saying to herself: "We should have
+worked out his life together.  Work together would have brought peace.
+He shuts me out--he shuts me out."
+
+At last she drew the bow across the instrument, once, twice, and then she
+began to play, forgetful of the world.  She had a contralto voice, and
+she sang with a depth of feeling and a delicate form worthy of a
+professional; on the piano she was effective and charming, but into the
+'cello she poured her soul.
+
+For quite an hour she played with scarce an interruption.  At last, with
+a sigh, she laid the instrument against her knee and gazed out of the
+window.  As she sat lost in her dream--a dream of the desert--a servant
+entered with letters.  One caught her eye.  It was from Egypt--from her
+cousin Lacey.  Her heart throbbed violently, yet she opened the official-
+looking envelope with steady fingers.  She would not admit even to her
+self that news from the desert could move her so.  She began to read
+slowly, but presently, with a little cry, she hastened through the pages.
+It ran:
+
+                                             THE SOUDAN.
+
+     DEAR LADY COUSIN,
+
+     I'm still not certain how I ought to style you, but I thought I'd
+     compromise as per above.  Anyway, it's a sure thing that I haven't
+     bothered you much with country-cousin letters.  I figure, however,
+     that you've put some money in Egypt, so to speak, and what happens
+     to this sandy-eyed foundling of the Nile you would like to know.  So
+     I've studied the only "complete letter-writer" I could find between
+     the tropic of Capricorn and Khartoum, and this is the contemptible
+     result, as the dagos in Mexico say.  This is a hot place by reason
+     of the sun that shines above us, and likewise it is hot because of
+     the niggers that swarm around us.  I figure, if we get out of this
+     portion of the African continent inside our skins, that we will have
+     put up a pretty good bluff, and pulled off a ticklish proposition.
+
+     It's a sort of early Christian business.  You see, David the Saadat
+     is great on moral suasion--he's a master of it; and he's never
+     failed yet--not altogether; though there have been minutes by a
+     stop-watch when I've thought it wouldn't stand the strain.  Like the
+     Mississippi steamboat which was so weak that when the whistle blew
+     the engines stopped!  When those frozen minutes have come to us,
+     I've tried to remember the correct religious etiquette, but I've not
+     had much practise since I stayed with Aunt Melissa, and lived on
+     skim-milk and early piety.  When things were looking as bad as they
+     did for Dives, "Now I lay me down to sleep," and "For what we are
+     about to receive," was all that I could think of.  But the Saadat,
+     he's a wonder from Wondertown.  With a little stick, or maybe his
+     flute under his arm, he'll smile and string these heathen along,
+     when you'd think they weren't waiting for anybody.  A spear took off
+     his fez yesterday.  He never blinked--he's a jim-dandy at keeping
+     cool; and when a hundred mounted heathens made a rush down on him
+     the other day, spears sticking out like quills on a porcupine--2.5
+     on the shell-road the chargers were going--did he stir?  Say, he
+     watched 'em as if they were playing for his benefit.  And sure
+     enough, he was right.  They parted either side of him when they were
+     ten feet away, and there he was quite safe, a blessing in the storm,
+     a little rock island in the rapids--but I couldn't remember a proper
+     hymn of praise to say.
+
+     There's no getting away from the fact that he's got a will or
+     something, a sort of force different from most of us, or perhaps any
+     of us.  These heathen feel it, and keep their hands off him.  They
+     say he's mad, but they've got great respect for mad people, for they
+     think that God has got their souls above with Him, and that what's
+     left behind on earth is sacred.  He talks to'em, too, like a father
+     in Israel; tells 'em they must stop buying and selling slaves, and
+     that if they don't he will have to punish them!  And I sit holding
+     my sides, for we're only two white men and forty "friendlies"
+     altogether, and two revolvers among us; and I've got the two!  And
+     they listen to his blarneying, and say, "Aiwa, Saadat!  aiwa,
+     Saadat!" as if he had an army of fifty thousand behind him.
+     Sometimes I've sort of hinted that his canoe was carrying a lot of
+     sail; but my! he believes in it all as if there wasn't a spear or a
+     battle-axe or a rifle within a hundred miles of him.  We've been at
+     this for two months now, and a lot of ground we covered till we got
+     here.  I've ridden the gentle camel at the rate of sixty and seventy
+     miles a day--sort of sweeping through the land, making treaties,
+     giving presents, freeing slaves, appointing governors and sheikhs-
+     el-beled, doing it as if we owned the continent.  He mesmerised 'em,
+     simply mesmerised 'em-till we got here.  I don't know what happened
+     then.  Now we're distinctly rating low, the laugh is on us somehow.
+     But he--mind it?  He goes about talking to the sheikhs as though we
+     were all eating off the same corn-cob, and it seems to stupefy them;
+     they don't grasp it.  He goes on arranging for a post here and a
+     station there, and it never occurs to him that it ain't really
+     actual.  He doesn't tell me, and I don't ask him, for I came along
+     to wipe his stirrups, so to speak.  I put my money on him, and I'm
+     not going to worry him.  He's so dead certain in what he does, and
+     what he is, that I don't lose any sleep guessing about him.  It will
+     be funny if we do win out on this proposition--funnier than
+     anything.
+
+     Now, there's one curious thing about it all which ought to be
+     whispered, for I'm only guessing, and I'm not a good guesser; I
+     guessed too much in Mexico about three railways and two silvermines.
+     The first two days after we came here, everything was all right.
+     Then there came an Egyptian, Halim Bey, with a handful of niggers
+     from Cairo, and letters for Claridge Pasha.
+
+     From that minute there was trouble.  I figure it out this way: Halim
+     was sent by Nahoum Pasha to bring letters that said one thing to the
+     Saadat, and, when quite convenient, to say other things to Mustafa,
+     the boss-sheikh of this settlement.  Halim Bey has gone again, but
+     he has left his tale behind him.  I'd stake all I lost, and more
+     than I ever expect to get out of Mexico on that, and maybe I'll get
+     a hatful out of Mexico yet.  I had some good mining propositions
+     down there.  The Saadat believes in Nahoum, and has made Nahoum what
+     he is; and on the surface Nahoum pretends to help him; but he is
+     running underground all the time.  I'd like to help give him a villa
+     at Fazougli.  When the Saadat was in England there was a bad time in
+     Egypt.  I was in Cairo; I know.  It was the same bad old game--the
+     corvee, the kourbash, conscription, a war manufactured to fill the
+     pockets of a few, while the poor starved and died.  It didn't come
+     off, because the Saadat wasn't gone long enough, and he stopped it
+     when he came back.  But Nahoumhe laid the blame on others, and the
+     Saadat took his word for it, and, instead of a war, there came this
+     expedition of his own.
+
+     Ten days later.--Things have happened.  First, there's been awful
+     sickness among the natives, and the Saadat has had his chance.  His
+     medicine-chest was loaded, he had a special camel for it--and he has
+     fired it off.  Night and day he has worked, never resting, never
+     sleeping, curing most, burying a few.  He looks like a ghost now,
+     but it's no use saying or doing anything.  He says: "Sink your own
+     will; let it be subject to a higher, and you need take no thought."
+     It's eating away his life and strength, but it has given us our
+     return tickets, I guess.  They hang about him as if he was Moses in
+     the wilderness smiting the rock.  It's his luck.  Just when I get
+     scared to death, and run down and want a tonic, and it looks as if
+     there'd be no need to put out next week's washing, then his luck
+     steps in, and we get another run.  But it takes a heap out of a man,
+     getting scared.  Whenever I look on a lot of green trees and cattle
+     and horses, and the sun, to say nothing of women and children, and
+     listen to music, or feel a horse eating up the ground under me, 2.10
+     in the sand, I hate to think of leaving it, and I try to prevent it.
+     Besides, I don't like the proposition of going, I don't know where.
+     That's why I get seared.  But he says that it's no more than turning
+     down the light and turning it up again.  They used to call me a
+     dreamer in Mexico, because I kept seeing things that no one else had
+     thought of, and laid out railways and tapped mines for the future;
+     but I was nothing to him.  I'm a high-and-dry hedge-clipper
+     alongside.  I'm betting on him all the time; but no one seems to be
+     working to make his dreams come true, except himself.  I don't
+     count; I'm no good, no real good.  I'm only fit to run the
+     commissariat, and see that he gets enough to eat, and has a safe
+     camel, and so on.
+
+     Why doesn't some one else help him?  He's working for humanity.
+     Give him half a chance, and Haroun-al-Raschid won't be in it.  Kaid
+     trusts him, depends on him, stands by him, but doesn't seem to know
+     how to help him when help would do most good.  The Saadat does it
+     all himself; and if it wasn't that the poor devil of a fellah sees
+     what he's doing, and cottons to him, and the dervishes and Arabs
+     feel he's right, he might as well leave.  But it's just there he
+     counts.  There's something about him, something that's Quaker in
+     him, primitive, silent, and perceptive--if that's a real word--which
+     makes them feel that he's honest, and isn't after anything for
+     himself.  Arabs don't talk much; they make each other understand
+     without many words.  They think with all their might on one thing at
+     a time, and they think things into happening--and so does he.  He's
+     a thousand years old, which is about as old-fashioned as I mean, and
+     as wise, and as plain to read as though you'd write the letters of
+     words as big as a date-palm.  That's where he makes the running with
+     them, and they can read their title clear to mansions in the skies!
+
+     You should hear him talk with Ebn Ezra Bey--perhaps you don't know
+     of Ezra?  He was a friend of his Uncle Benn, and brought the news of
+     his massacre to England, and came back with the Saadat.  Well, three
+     days ago Ebn Ezra came, and there came with him, too, Halim Bey, the
+     Egyptian, who had brought the letters to us from Cairo.  Elm Ezra
+     found him down the river deserted by his niggers, and sick with this
+     new sort of fever, which the Saadat is knocking out of time.  And
+     there he lies, the Saadat caring for him as though he was his
+     brother.  But that's his way; though, now I come to think of it, the
+     Saadat doesn't suspect what I suspect, that Halim Bey brought word
+     from Nahoum to our sheikhs here to keep us here, or lose us, or do
+     away with us.  Old Ebn Ezra doesn't say much himself, doesn't say
+     anything about that; but he's guessing the same as me.  And the
+     Saadat looks as though he was ready for his grave, but keeps going,
+     going, going.  He never seems to sleep.  What keeps him alive I
+     don't know.  Sometimes I feel clean knocked out myself with the
+     little I do, but he's a travelling hospital all by his lonesome.
+
+     Later.--I had to stop writing, for things have been going on--
+     several.  I can see that Ebn Ezra has told the Saadat things that
+     make him want to get away to Cairo as soon as possible.  That it's
+     Nahoum Pasha and others--oh, plenty of others, of course--I'm
+     certain; but what the particular game is I don't know.  Perhaps you
+     know over in England, for you're nearer Cairo than we are by a few
+     miles, and you've got the telegraph.  Perhaps there's a revolution,
+     perhaps there's been a massacre of Europeans, perhaps Turkey is
+     kicking up a dust, perhaps Europe is interfering--all of it, all at
+     once.
+
+     Later still.--I've found out it's a little of all, and the Saadat is
+     ready to go.  I guess he can go now pretty soon, for the worst of
+     the fever is over.  But something has happened that's upset him-
+     knocked him stony for a minute.  Halim Bey was killed last night--by
+     order of the sheikhs, I'm told; but the sheikhs won't give it away.
+     When the Saadat went to them, his eyes blazing, his face pale as a
+     sheet, and as good as swore at them, and treated them as though he'd
+     string them up the next minute, they only put their hands on their
+     heads, and said they were "the fallen leaves for his foot to
+     scatter," the "snow on the hill for his breath to melt"; but they
+     wouldn't give him any satisfaction.  So he came back and shut
+     himself up in his tent, and he sits there like a ghost all
+     shrivelled up for want of sleep, and his eyes like a lime-kiln
+     burning; for now he knows this at least, that Halim Bey had brought
+     some word from Kaid's Palace that set these Arabs against him, and
+     nearly stopped my correspondence.  You see, there's a widow in
+     Cairo--she's a sister of the American consul, and I've promised to
+     take her with a party camping in the Fayoum--cute as she can be, and
+     plays the guitar.  But it's all right now, except that the Saadat is
+     running too close and fine.  If he has any real friends in England
+     among the Government people, or among those who can make the
+     Government people sit up, and think what's coming to Egypt and to
+     him, they'll help him now when he needs it.  He'll need help real
+     bad when he gets back to Cairo--if we get that far.  It isn't yet a
+     sure thing, for we've got to fight in the next day or two--I forgot
+     to tell you that sooner.  There's a bull-Arab on the rampage with
+     five thousand men, and he's got a claim out on our sheikh, Mustafa,
+     for ivory he has here, and there's going to be a scrimmage.  We've
+     got to make for a better position to-morrow, and meet Abdullah, the
+     bull-Arab, further down the river.  That's one reason why Mustafa
+     and all our friends here are so sweet on us now.  They look on the
+     Saadat as a kind of mascot, and they think that he can wipe out the
+     enemy with his flute, which they believe is a witch-stick to work
+     wonders.
+
+     He's just sent for me to come, and I must stop soon.  Say, he hasn't
+     had sleep for a fortnight.  It's too much; he can't stand it.  I
+     tried it, and couldn't.  It wore me down.  He's killing himself for
+     others.  I can't manage him; but I guess you could.  I apologise,
+     dear Lady Cousin.  I'm only a hayseed, and a failure, but I guess
+     you'll understand that I haven't thought only of myself as I wrote
+     this letter.  The higher you go in life the more you'll understand;
+     that's your nature.  I'll get this letter off by a nigger to-morrow,
+     with those the Saadat is sending through to Cairo by some
+     friendlies.  It's only a chance; but everything's chance here now.
+     Anyhow, it's safer than leaving it till the scrimmage.  If you get
+     this, won't you try and make the British Government stand by the
+     Saadat?  Your husband, the lord, could pull it off, if he tried; and
+     if you ask him, I guess he'd try.  I must be off now.  David Pasha
+     will be waiting.  Well, give my love to the girls!
+
+               Your affectionate cousin,
+
+                                        TOM LACEY.
+
+     P. S.--I've got a first-class camel for our scrimmage day after
+     to-morrow.  Mustafa sent it to me this morning.  I had a fight on
+     mules once, down at Oaxaca, but that was child's play.  This will be
+     "slaughter in the pan," if the Saadat doesn't stop it somehow.
+     Perhaps he will.  If I wasn't so scared I'd wish he couldn't stop
+     it, for it will be a way-up Barbarian scrap, the tongs and the
+     kettle, a bully panjandrum.  It gets mighty dull in the desert when
+     you're not moving.  But "it makes to think," as the French say.
+     Since I came out here I've had several real centre thoughts, sort of
+     main principles-key-thoughts, that's it.  What I want now is a sort
+     of safety-ring to string 'em on and keep 'em safe; for I haven't a
+     good memory, and I get mighty rattled sometimes.  Thoughts like
+     these are like the secret of a combination lock; they let you into
+     the place where the gold and securities and title-deeds of life are.
+     Trouble is, I haven't got a safety-ring, and I'm certain to lose
+     them.  I haven't got what you'd call an intellectual memory.  Things
+     come in flashes to me out of experiences, and pull me up short, and
+     I say, "Yes, that's it--that's it; I understand."  I see why it's
+     so, and what it means, and where it leads, and how far it spreads.
+     It's five thousand years old.  Adam thought it after Cain killed
+     Abel, or Abel thought it just before he died, or Eve learned it from
+     Lilith, or it struck Abraham when he went to sacrifice Isaac.
+     Sometimes things hit me deep like that here in the desert.  Then I
+     feel I can see just over on the horizon the tents of Moab in the
+     wilderness; that yesterday and to-day are the same; that I've
+     crossed the prairies of the everlasting years, and am playing about
+     with Ishmael in the wild hills, or fighting with Ahab.  Then the
+     world and time seem pretty small potatoes.
+
+     You see how it is.  I never was trained to think, and I get stunned
+     by thoughts that strike me as being dug right out of the centre.
+     Sometimes I'd like to write them down; but I can't write; I can only
+     talk as I'm talking to you.  If you weren't so high up, and so much
+     cleverer than I am, and such a thinker, I'd like you to be my
+     safety-ring, if you would.  I could tell the key-thoughts to you
+     when they came to me, before I forgot them with all their bearings;
+     and by-and-by they'd do me a lot of good when I got away from this
+     influence, and back into the machinery of the Western world again.
+     If you could come out here, if you could feel what I feel here--and
+     you would feel a thousand times as much--I don't know what you
+     wouldn't do.
+
+     It's pretty wonderful.  The nights with the stars so white and
+     glittering, and so near that you'd think you could reach up and hand
+     them down; the dark, deep, blue beyond; such a width of life all
+     round you, a sort of never-ending space, that everything you ever
+     saw or did seems little, and God so great in a kind of hovering
+     sense like a pair of wings; and all the secrets of time coming out
+     of it all, and sort of touching your face like a velvet wind.  I
+     expect you'll think me sentimental, a first-class squash out of the
+     pumpkin-garden; but it's in the desert, and it gets into you and
+     saturates you, till you feel that this is a kind of middle space
+     between the world of cities, and factories, and railways, and
+     tenement-houses, and the quiet world to come--a place where they
+     think out things for the benefit of future generations, and convey
+     them through incarnations, or through the desert.  Say, your
+     ladyship, I'm a chatterer, I'm a two-cent philosopher, I'm a baby;
+     but you are too much like your grandmother, who was the daughter of
+     a Quaker like David Pasha, to laugh at me.
+
+     I've got a suit of fine chain-armour which I bought of an Arab down
+     by Darfur.  I'm wondering if it would be too cowardly to wear it in
+     the scrap that's coming.  I don't know, though, but what I'll wear
+     it, I get so scared.  But it will be a frightful hot thing under my
+     clothes, and it's hot enough without that, so I'm not sure.  It
+     depends how much my teeth chatter when I see "the dawn of battle."
+
+     I've got one more thing before I stop.  I'm going to send you a
+     piece of poetry which the Saadat wrote, and tore in two, and threw
+     away.  He was working off his imagination, I guess, as you have to
+     do out here.  I collected it and copied it, and put in the
+     punctuation--he didn't bother about that.  Perhaps he can't
+     punctuate.  I don't understand quite what the poetry means, but
+     maybe you will.  Anyway, you'll see that it's a real desert piece.
+     Here it is:
+
+
+                         "THE DESERT ROAD
+
+              "In the sands I lived in a hut of palm,
+               There was never a garden to see;
+               There was never a path through the desert calm,
+               Nor a way through its storms for me.
+
+              "Tenant was I of a lone domain;
+               The far pale caravans wound
+               To the rim of the sky, and vanished again;
+               My call in the waste was drowned.
+
+              "The vultures came and hovered and fled;
+               And once there stole to my door
+               A white gazelle, but its eyes were dread
+               With the hurt of the wounds it bore.
+
+              "It passed in the dusk with a foot of fear,
+               And the white cold mists rolled in;
+
+               "And my heart was the heart of a stricken deer,
+               Of a soul in the snare of sin.
+
+              "My days they withered like rootless things,
+               And the sands rolled on, rolled wide;
+               Like a pelican I, with broken wings,
+               Like a drifting barque on the tide.
+
+              "But at last, in the light of a rose-red day,
+               In the windless glow of the morn,
+               From over the hills and from far away,
+               You came--ah, the joy of the morn!
+
+              "And wherever your footsteps fell, there crept
+               A path--it was fair and wide:
+               A desert road which no sands have swept,
+               Where never a hope has died.
+
+              "I followed you forth, and your beauty held
+               My heart like an ancient song;
+               By that desert road to the blossoming plains
+               I came-and the way was long!
+
+              "So I set my course by the light of your eyes;
+               I care not what fate may send;
+               On the road I tread shine the love-starred skies--
+               The road with never an end."
+
+     Not many men can do things like that, and the other things, too,
+     that he does.  Perhaps he will win through, by himself, but is it
+     fair to have him run the risk?  If he ever did you a good turn, as
+     you once said to me he did, won't you help him now?  You are on the
+     inside of political things, and if you make up your mind to help,
+     nothing will stop you--that was your grandmother's way.  He ought to
+     get his backing pretty soon, or it won't be any good.  .  .  .  I
+     hear him at his flute.  I expect he's tired waiting for me.  Well,
+     give my love to the girls!
+                                                  T.  L.
+
+
+As Hylda read, she passed through phases of feeling begotten of new
+understanding which shook her composure.  She had seen David and all that
+David was doing; Egypt, and all that was threatening the land through the
+eyes of another who told the whole truth--except about his own cowardice,
+which was untrue.  She felt the issues at stake.  While the mention of
+David's personal danger left her sick for a moment, she saw the wider
+peril also to the work he had set out to do.
+
+What was the thing without the man?  It could not exist--it had no
+meaning.  Where was he now?  What had been the end of the battle?  He had
+saved others, had he saved himself?  The most charmed life must be
+pierced by the shaft of doom sooner or later; but he was little more than
+a youth yet, he had only just begun!
+
+"And the Saadat looks as though he was ready for his grave--but keeps
+going, going, going.!"  The words kept ringing in her ears.  Again: "And
+he sits there like a ghost all shrivelled up for want of sleep, and his
+eyes like a lime-kiln burning.  .  .  .  He hasn't had sleep for a
+fortnight.  .  .  .  He's killing himself for others."
+
+Her own eyes were shining with a dry, hot light, her lips were quivering,
+but her hands upon the letter were steady and firm.  What could she do?
+
+She went to a table, picked up the papers, and scanned them hurriedly.
+Not a word about Egypt.  She thought for a moment, then left the drawing-
+room.  Passing up a flight of stairs to her husband's study, she knocked
+and entered.  It was empty; but Eglington was in the house, for a red
+despatch-box lay open on his table.  Instinctively she glanced at the
+papers exposed in the box, and at the letters beside it.  The document on
+the top of the pile in the box related to Cyprus--the name caught her
+eye.  Another document was half-exposed beneath it.  Her hand went to her
+heart.  She saw the words, "Soudan" and "Claridge Pasha."  She reached
+for it, then drew back her hand, and her eyes closed as though to shut it
+out from her sight.  Why should she not see it?  They were her husband's
+papers, husband and wife were one.  Husband and wife one!  She shrank
+back.  Were they one?  An overmastering desire was on her.  It seemed
+terrible to wait, when here before her was news of David, of life or
+death.  Suddenly she put out her hand and drew the Cyprus paper over the
+Egyptian document, so that she might not see it.
+
+As she did so the door opened on her, and Eglington entered.  He had seen
+the swift motion of her hand, and again a look peculiar to him crossed
+his face, enigmatical, cynical, not pleasant to see.
+
+She turned on him slowly, and he was aware of her inward distress to some
+degree, though her face was ruled to quietness.
+
+He nodded at her and smiled.  She shrank, for she saw in his nod and his
+smile that suggestion of knowing all about everything and everybody, and
+thinking the worst, which had chilled her so often.  Even in their short
+married life it had chilled those confidences which she would gladly have
+poured out before him, if he had been a man with an open soul.  Had there
+been joined to his intellect and temperament a heart capable of true
+convictions and abiding love, what a man he might have been!  But his
+intellect was superficial, and his temperament was dangerous, because
+there were not the experiences of a soul of truth to give the deeper hold
+upon the meaning of life.  She shrank now, as, with a little laugh and
+glancing suggestively at the despatch-box, he said:
+
+"And what do you think of it all?"
+
+She felt as though something was crushing her heart within its grasp, and
+her eyes took on a new look of pain.  "I did not read the papers," she
+answered quietly.
+
+"I saw them in your fingers.  What creatures women are--so dishonourable
+in little things," he said ironically.
+
+She laid a hand on his.  "I did not read them, Harry," she urged.
+
+He smiled and patted her arm.  "There, there, it doesn't matter," he
+laughed.  He watched her narrowly.  "It matters greatly," she answered
+gently, though his words had cut her like a knife.  "I did not read the
+papers.  I only saw the word 'Cyprus' on the first paper, and I pushed it
+over the paper which had the word 'Egypt' on it 'Egypt' and 'Claridge,'
+lest I should read it.  I did not wish to read it.  I am not
+dishonourable, Harry."
+
+He had hurt her more than he had ever done; and only the great matter
+at stake had prevented the lesser part of her from bursting forth in
+indignation, from saying things which she did not wish to say.  She had
+given him devotion--such devotion, such self-effacement in his career as
+few women ever gave.  Her wealth--that was so little in comparison with
+the richness of her nature--had been his; and yet his vast egotism took
+it all as his right, and she was repaid in a kind of tyranny, the more
+galling and cruel because it was wielded by a man of intellect and
+culture, and ancient name and tradition.  If he had been warned that
+he was losing his wife's love, he would have scouted the idea, his self-
+assurance was so strong, his vanity complete.  If, however, he had been
+told that another man was thinking of his wife, he would have believed
+it, as he believed now that David had done; and he cherished that belief,
+and let resentment grow.  He was the Earl of Eglington, and no matter
+what reputation David had reached, he was still a member of a Quaker
+trader's family, with an origin slightly touched with scandal.  Another
+resentment, however, was steadily rising in him.  It galled him that
+Hylda should take so powerful an interest in David's work in Egypt; and
+he knew now that she had always done so.  It did not ease his vexed
+spirit to know that thousands of others of his fellow-countrymen did the
+same.  They might do so, but she was his wife, and his own work was the
+sun round which her mind and interest should revolve.
+
+"Why should you be so keen about Egypt and Claridge Pasha?" he said to
+her now.
+
+Her face hardened a little.  Had he the right to torture her so?  To
+suspect her?  She could read it in his eyes.  Her conscience was clear.
+She was no man's slave.  She would not be any man's slave.  She was
+master of her own soul.  What right had he to catechise her--as though
+she were a servant or a criminal?  But she checked the answer on her
+tongue, because she was hurt deeper than words could express, and she
+said, composedly:
+
+"I have here a letter from my cousin Lacey, who is with Claridge Pasha.
+It has news of him, of events in the Soudan.  He had fever, there was to
+be a fight, and I wished to know if you had any later news.  I thought
+that document there might contain news, but I did not read it.  I
+realised that it was not yours, that it belonged to the Government, that
+I had no right.  Perhaps you will tell me if you have news.  Will you?"
+She leaned against the table wearily, holding her letter.
+
+"Let me read your letter first," he said wilfully.
+
+A mist seemed to come before her eyes; but she was schooled to self-
+command, and he did not see he had given her a shock.  Her first impulse
+was to hand the letter over at once; then there came the remembrance of
+all it contained, all it suggested.  Would he see all it suggested?  She
+recalled the words Lacey had used regarding a service which David had
+once done her.  If Eglington asked, what could she say?  It was not her
+secret alone, it was another's.  Would she have the right, even if she
+wished it, to tell the truth, or part of the truth?  Or, would she be
+entitled to relate some immaterial incident which would evade the real
+truth?  What good could it do to tell the dark story?  What could it
+serve?  Eglington would horribly misunderstand it--that she knew.  There
+were the verses also.  They were more suggestive than anything else,
+though, indeed, they might have referred to another woman, or were merely
+impersonal; but she felt that was not so.  And there was Eglington's
+innate unbelief in man and woman!  Her first impulse held, however.  She
+would act honestly.  She would face whatever there was to face.  She
+would not shelter herself; she would not give him the right in the future
+to say she had not dealt fairly by him, had evaded any inquest of her
+life or mind which he might make.
+
+She gave him the letter, her heart standing still, but she was filled
+with a regnant determination to defend herself, to defend David against
+any attack, or from any consequences.
+
+All her life and hopes seemed hanging in the balance, as he began to read
+the letter.  With fear she saw his face cloud over, heard an impatient
+exclamation pass his lips.  She closed her eyes to gather strength for
+the conflict which was upon her.  He spoke, and she vaguely wondered what
+passage in the letter had fixed his attention.  His voice seemed very far
+away.  She scarcely understood.  But presently it pierced the clouds of
+numbness between them, and she realised what he was saying:
+
+"Vulgar fellow--I can't congratulate you upon your American cousin.  So,
+the Saadat is great on moral suasion, master of it--never failed yet--not
+altogether--and Aunt Melissa and skim-milk and early piety!'  And 'the
+Saadat is a wonder from Wondertown'--like a side-show to a circus, a
+marvel on the flying trapeze!  Perhaps you can give me the sense of the
+letter, if there is any sense in it.  I can't read his writing, and it
+seems interminable.  Would you mind?"
+
+A sigh of relief broke from her.  A weight slipped away from her heart
+and brain.  It was as though one in armour awaited the impact of a heavy,
+cruel, overwhelming foe, who suddenly disappeared, and the armour fell
+from the shoulders, and breath came easily once again.
+
+"Would you mind?" he repeated drily, as he folded up the letter slowly.
+
+He handed it back to her, the note of sarcasm in his voice pricking her
+like the point of a dagger.  She felt angered with herself that he could
+rouse her temper by such small mean irony.  She had a sense of bitter
+disappointment in him--or was it a deep hurt?--that she had not made him
+love her, truly love her.  If he had only meant the love that he swore
+before they had married!  Why had he deceived her?  It had all been in
+his hands, her fate and future; but almost before the bridal flowers had
+faded, she had come to know two bitter things: that he had married with a
+sordid mind; that he was incapable of the love which transmutes the half-
+comprehending, half-developed affection of the maid into the absorbing,
+understanding, beautiful passion of the woman.  She had married not
+knowing what love and passion were; uncomprehending, and innocent because
+uncomprehending; with a fine affection, but capable of loving wholly.
+One thing had purified her motives and her life--the desire to share with
+Eglington his public duty and private hopes, to be his confidante, his
+friend, his coadjutor, proud of him, eager for him, determined to help
+him.  But he had blocked the path to all inner companionship.  He did no
+more than let her share the obvious and outer responsibilities of his
+life.  From the vital things, if there were vital things, she was shut
+out.  What would she not give for one day of simple tenderness and quiet
+affection, a true day with a true love!
+
+She was now perfectly composed.  She told him the substance of the
+letter, of David's plight, of the fever, of the intended fight, of Nahoum
+Pasha, of the peril to David's work.  He continued to interrogate her,
+while she could have shrieked out the question, "What is in yonder
+document?  What do you know?  Have you news of his safety?"  Would he
+never stop his questioning?  It was trying her strength and patience
+beyond endurance.  At last he drew the document slowly from the despatch-
+box, and glanced up and down it musingly.  "I fancy he won the battle,"
+he said slowly, "for they have news of him much farther down the river.
+But from this letter I take it he is not yet within the zone of safety--
+so Nahoum Pasha says."  He flicked the document upwards with his thumb.
+
+"What is our Government doing to help him?" she asked, checking her
+eagerness.
+
+His heart had gradually hardened towards Egypt.  Power had emphasised
+a certain smallness in him.  Personal considerations informed the policy
+of the moment.  He was not going to be dragged at the chariot-wheels of
+the Quaker.  To be passive, when David in Egypt had asked for active
+interest; to delay, when urgency was important to Claridge Pasha; to
+speak coldly on Egyptian affairs to his chief, the weak Foreign
+Secretary, this was the policy he had begun.
+
+So he answered now: "It is the duty of the Egyptian Government to help
+him--of Prince Kaid, of Nahoum Pasha, who is acting for him in his
+absence, who governs finance, and therefore the army.  Egypt does not
+belong to England."
+
+"Nahoum Pasha is his enemy.  He will do nothing to help, unless you force
+him."
+
+"Why do you say that?"
+
+"Because I know Nahoum Pasha."
+
+"When did you know Nahoum?"
+
+"In Egypt, years ago."
+
+"Your acquaintance is more varied than I thought," he said sarcastically.
+
+"Oh, do not speak to me like that!" she returned, in a low, indignant
+voice.
+
+"Do not patronise me; do not be sarcastic."
+
+"Do not be so sensitive," he answered unemotionally.
+
+"You surely do not mean that you--that the Government will not help him?
+He is doing the work of Europe, of civilisation, of Christianity there.
+He is sacrificing himself for the world.  Do you not see it?  Oh, but you
+do!  You would realise his work if you knew Egypt as I have seen it."
+
+"Expediency must govern the policy of nations," he answered critically.
+
+"But, if through your expediency he is killed like a rat in a trap, and
+his work goes to pieces--all undone!  Is there no right in the matter?"
+
+"In affairs of state other circumstances than absolute 'right' enter.
+Here and there the individual is sacrificed who otherwise would be saved
+--if it were expedient."
+
+"Oh, Eglington!  He is of your own county, of your own village, is your
+neighbour, a man of whom all England should be proud.  You can intervene
+if you will be just, and say you will.  I know that intervention has been
+discussed in the Cabinet."
+
+"You say he is of my county.  So are many people, and yet they are not
+county people.  A neighbour he was, but more in a Scriptural than social
+sense."  He was hurting her purposely.
+
+She made a protesting motion of her hand.  "No, no, no, do not be so
+small.  This is a great matter.  Do a great thing now; help it to be done
+for your own honour, for England's honour--for a good man's sake, for
+your country's sake."
+
+There came a knock at the door.  An instant afterwards a secretary
+entered.  "A message from the Prime Minister, sir."  He handed over a
+paper.
+
+"Will you excuse me?" he asked Hylda suavely, in his eyes the
+enigmatical look that had chilled her so often before.  She felt that her
+appeal had been useless.  She prepared to leave the room.  He took her
+hand, kissed it gallantly, and showed her out.  It was his way--too civil
+to be real.
+
+Blindly she made her way to her room.  Inside, she suddenly swayed and
+sank fainting to the ground, as Kate Heaver ran forward to her.  Kate saw
+the letter in the clinched hand.  Loosening it, she read two or three
+sentences with a gasp.  They contained Tom Lacey's appeal for David.  She
+lifted Hylda's head to her shoulder with endearing words, and chafed the
+cold hands, murmuring to herself the while.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE QUESTIONER
+
+"What has thee come to say?"
+
+Sitting in his high-backed chair, Luke Claridge seemed a part of its
+dignified severity.  In the sparsely furnished room with its uncarpeted
+floor, its plain teak table, its high wainscoting and undecorated walls,
+the old man had the look of one who belonged to some ancient consistory,
+a judge whose piety would march with an austerity that would save a human
+soul by destroying the body, if need be.
+
+A crisis had come, vaguely foreseen, sombrely eluded.  A questioner was
+before him who, poor, unheeded, an ancient victim of vice, could yet
+wield a weapon whose sweep of wounds would be wide.  Stern and masterful
+as he looked in his arid isolation, beneath all was a shaking anxiety.
+
+He knew well what the old chair-maker had come to say, but, in the
+prologue of the struggle before him, he was unwittingly manoeuvring for
+position.
+
+"Speak," he added presently, as Soolsby fumbled in his great loose
+pockets, and drew forth a paper.  "What has thee to say?"
+
+Without a word, Soolsby handed over the paper, but the other would not
+take it.
+
+"What is it?" he asked, his lips growing pale.  "Read--if thee can
+read."
+
+The gibe in the last words made the colour leap into Soolsby's face, and
+a fighting look came.  He too had staved off this inevitable hour, had
+dreaded it, but now his courage shot up high.
+
+"Doost think I have forgotten how to read since the day I put my hand to
+a writing you've hid so long from them it most concerns?  Ay, I can read,
+and I can write, and I will prove that I can speak too before I've done."
+
+"Read--read," rejoined the old man hoarsely, his hands tightly gripping
+the chair-arm.
+
+"The fever caught him at Shendy--that is the place--"
+
+"He is not dead--David is not dead?" came the sharp, pained
+interruption.  The old man's head strained forward, his eyes were misty
+and dazed.
+
+Soolsby's face showed no pity for the other's anxiety; it had a kind of
+triumph in it.  "Nay, he is living," he answered.  "He got well of the
+fever, and came to Cairo, but he's off again into the desert.  It's the
+third time.  You can't be tempting Providence for ever.  This paper here
+says it's too big a job for one man--like throwing a good life away.
+Here in England is his place, it says.  And so say I; and so I have come
+to say, and to hear you say so, too.  What is he there?  One man against
+a million.  What put it in his head that he thinks he can do it?"
+
+His voice became lower; he fixed his eyes meaningly on the other.  "When
+a man's life got a twist at the start, no wonder it flies off madlike to
+do the thing that isn't to be done, and leave undone the thing that's
+here for it to do.  Doost think a straight line could come from the
+crooked line you drew for him?"
+
+"He is safe--he is well and strong again?" asked the old man painfully.
+Suddenly he reached out a hand for the paper.  "Let me read," he said, in
+a voice scarce above a whisper.
+
+He essayed to take the paper calmly, but it trembled in his hands.  He
+spread it out and fumbled for his glasses, but could not find them, and
+he gazed helplessly at the page before him.  Soolsby took the paper from
+him and read slowly:
+
+".  .  .  Claridge Pasha has done good work in Egypt, but he is a
+generation too soon, it may be two or three too soon.  We can but regard
+this fresh enterprise as a temptation to Fate to take from our race one
+of the most promising spirits and vital personalities which this
+generation has produced.  It is a forlorn hope.  Most Englishmen familiar
+with Claridge Pasha's life and aims will ask--"
+
+An exclamation broke from the old man.  In the pause which followed he
+said: "It was none of my doing.  He went to Egypt against my will."
+
+"Ay, so many a man's said that's not wanted to look his own acts straight
+in the face.  If Our Man had been started different, if he'd started in
+the path where God A'mighty dropped him, and not in the path Luke
+Claridge chose, would he have been in Egypt to-day wearing out his life?
+He's not making carpets there, he's only beating them."
+
+The homely illustration drawn from the business in which he had been
+interested so many years went home to Claridge's mind.  He shrank back,
+and sat rigid, his brows drawing over the eyes, till they seemed sunk in
+caverns of the head.  Suddenly Soolsby's voice rose angrily.  Luke
+Claridge seemed so remorseless and unyielding, so set in his vanity and
+self-will!  Soolsby misread the rigid look in the face, the pale
+sternness.  He did not know that there had suddenly come upon Luke
+Claridge the full consciousness of an agonising truth--that all he had
+done where David was concerned had been a mistake.  The hard look, the
+sternness, were the signals of a soul challenging itself.
+
+"Ay, you've had your own will," cried Soolsby mercilessly.  "You've said
+to God A'mighty that He wasn't able to work out to a good end what He'd
+let happen; and so you'd do His work for Him.  You kept the lad hid away
+from the people that belonged to him, you kept him out of his own, and
+let others take his birthright.  You put a shame upon him, hiding who his
+father and his father's people were, and you put a shame upon her that
+lies in the graveyard--as sweet a lass, as good, as ever lived on earth.
+Ay, a shame and a scandal!  For your eyes were shut always to the
+sidelong looks, your ears never heard the things people said--'A good-
+for-nothing ship-captain, a scamp and a ne'er-do-weel, one that had a
+lass at every port, and, maybe, wives too; one that none knew or ever had
+seen--a pirate maybe, or a slave-dealer, or a jail-bird, for all they
+knew!  Married--oh yes, married right enough, but nothing else--not even
+a home.  Just a ring on the finger, and then, beyond and away!'  Around
+her life that brought into the world our lad yonder you let a cloud draw
+down; and you let it draw round his, too, for he didn't even bear his
+father's name--much less knew who his father was--or live in his father's
+home, or come by his own in the end.  You gave the lad shame and scandal.
+Do you think, he didn't feel it, was it much or little?  He wasn't
+walking in the sun, but--"
+
+"Mercy!  Mercy!" broke in the old man, his hand before his eyes.  He was
+thinking of Mercy, his daughter, of the words she had said to him when
+she died, "Set him in the sun, father, where God can find him," and her
+name now broke from his lips.
+
+Soolsby misunderstood.  "Ay, there'll be mercy when right's been done
+Our Man, and not till then.  I've held my tongue for half a lifetime, but
+I'll speak now and bring him back.  Ay, he shall come back and take the
+place that is his, and all that belongs to him.  That lordship yonder--
+let him go out into the world and make his place as the Egyptian did.
+He's had his chance to help Our Man, and he has only hurt, not helped
+him.  We've had enough of his second-best lordship and his ways."
+
+The old man's face was painful in its stricken stillness now.  He had
+regained control of himself, his brain had recovered greatly from its
+first suffusion of excitement.
+
+"How does thee know my lord yonder has hurt and not helped him?" he
+asked in an even voice, his lips tightening, however.  "How does thee
+know it surely?"
+
+"From Kate Heaver, my lady's maid.  My lady's illness--what was it?
+Because she would help Our Man, and, out of his hatred, yonder second son
+said that to her which no woman can bear that's a true woman; and then,
+what with a chill and fever, she's been yonder ailing these weeks past.
+She did what she could for him, and her husband did what he could against
+him."
+
+The old man settled back in his chair again.  "Thee has kept silent all
+these years?  Thee has never told any that lives?"
+
+"I gave my word to her that died--to our Egyptian's mother--that I would
+never speak unless you gave me leave to speak, or if you should die
+before me.  It was but a day before the lad was born.  So have I kept my
+word.  But now you shall speak.  Ay, then, but you shall speak, or I'll
+break my word to her, to do right by her son.  She herself would speak if
+she was here, and I'll answer her, if ever I see her after Purgatory, for
+speaking now."
+
+The old man drew himself up in his chair as though in pain, and said very
+slowly, almost thickly: "I shall answer also for all I did.  The spirit
+moved me.  He is of my blood--his mother was dead--in his veins is
+the blood that runs in mine.  His father--aristocrat, spendthrift,
+adventurer, renegade, who married her in secret, and left her, bidding
+her return to me, until he came again, and she to bear him a child--was
+he fit to bring up the boy?"
+
+He breathed heavily, his face became wan and haggard, as he continued:
+"Restless on land or sea, for ever seeking some new thing, and when he
+found it, and saw what was therein, he turned away forgetful.  God put it
+into my heart to abjure him and the life around him.  The Voice made me
+rescue the child from a life empty and bare and heartless and proud.
+When he returned, and my child was in her grave, he came to me in secret;
+he claimed the child of that honest lass whom he had married under a
+false name.  I held my hand lest I should kill him, man of peace as I am.
+Even his father--Quaker though he once became--did we not know ere the
+end that he had no part or lot with us, that he but experimented with his
+soul, as with all else?  Experiment--experiment--experiment, until at
+last an Eglington went exploring in my child's heart, and sent her to her
+grave--the God of Israel be her rest and refuge!  What should such high-
+placed folk do stooping out of their sphere to us who walk in plain
+paths?  What have we in common with them?  My soul would have none of
+them--masks of men, the slaves of riches and titles, and tyrants over the
+poor."
+
+His voice grew hoarse and high, and his head bent forward.  He spoke as
+though forgetful of Soolsby's presence: "As the East is from the West, so
+were we separate from these lovers of this world, the self-indulgent, the
+hard-hearted, the proud.  I chose for the child that he should stay with
+me and not go to him, to remain among his own people and his own class.
+He was a sinister, an evil man.  Was the child to be trusted with him?"
+
+"The child was his own child," broke in Soolsby.  "Your daughter was his
+lady--the Countess of Eglington!  Not all the Quakers in heaven or earth
+could alter that.  His first-born son is Earl of Eglington, and has been
+so these years past; and you, nor his second-best lordship there, nor all
+the courts in England can alter that.  .  .  .  Ay, I've kept my peace,
+but I will speak out now.  I was with the Earl--James Fetherdon he called
+himself--when he married her that's gone to heaven, if any ever went to
+heaven; and I can prove all.  There's proof aplenty, and 'tis a pity, ay,
+God's pity!  that 'twas not used long ago.  Well I knew, as the years
+passed, that the Earl's heart was with David, but he had not the courage
+to face it all, so worn away was the man in him.  Ah, if the lad had
+always been with him--who can tell?--he might have been different!
+Whether so or not, it was the lad's right to take his place his mother
+gave him, let be whatever his father was.  'Twas a cruel thing done to
+him.  His own was his own, to run his race as God A'mighty had laid the
+hurdles, not as Luke Claridge willed.  I'm sick of seeing yonder fellow
+in Our Man's place, he that will not give him help, when he may; he that
+would see him die like a dog in the desert, brother or no brother--"
+
+"He does not know--Lord Eglington does not know the truth?" interposed
+the old man in a heavy whisper.  "He does not know, but, if he knew,
+would it matter to him!  So much the more would he see Our Man die yonder
+in the sands.  I know the breed.  I know him yonder, the skim-milk lord.
+There is no blood of justice, no milk of kindness in him.  Do you think
+his father that I friended in this thing--did he ever give me a penny,
+or aught save that hut on the hill that was not worth a pound a year?
+Did he ever do aught to show that he remembered?--Like father like son.
+I wanted naught.  I held my peace, not for him, but for her--for the
+promise I made her when she smiled at me and said: 'If I shouldn't be
+seeing thee again, Soolsby, remember; and if thee can ever prove a friend
+to the child that is to be, prove it.'  And I will prove it now.  He must
+come back to his own.  Right's right, and I will have it so.  More brains
+you may have, and wealth you have, but not more common sense than any
+common man like me.  If the spirit moved you to hold your peace, it moves
+me to make you speak.  With all your meek face you've been a hard, stiff-
+necked man, a tyrant too, and as much an aristocrat to such as me as any
+lord in the land.  But I've drunk the mug of silence to the bottom.
+I've--" He stopped short, seeing a strange look come over the other's
+face, then stepped forward quickly as the old man half rose from his
+chair, murmuring thickly:
+
+"Mercy--David, my lord, come--!" he muttered, and staggered, and fell
+into Soolsby's arms.
+
+His head dropped forward on his breast, and with a great sigh he sank
+into unconsciousness.  Soolsby laid him on a couch, and ran to the door
+and called aloud for help.
+
+                    ..........................
+
+The man of silence was silent indeed now.  In the room where paralysis
+had fallen on him a bed was brought, and he lay nerveless on the verge of
+a still deeper silence.  The hours went by.  His eyes opened, he saw and
+recognised them all, but his look rested only on Faith and Soolsby; and,
+as time went on, these were the only faces to which he gave an answering
+look of understanding.  Days wore away, but he neither spoke nor moved.
+
+People came and went softly, and he gave no heed.  There was ever a
+trouble in his eyes when they were open.  Only when Soolsby came did it
+seem to lessen.  Faith saw this, and urged Soolsby to sit by him.  She
+had questioned much concerning what had happened before the stroke fell,
+but Soolsby said only that the old man had been greatly troubled about
+David.  Once Lady Eglington, frail and gentle and sympathetic, came, but
+the trouble deepened in his eyes, and the lids closed over them, so that
+he might not see her face.
+
+When she had gone, Soolsby, who had been present and had interpreted the
+old man's look according to a knowledge all his own, came over to the
+bed, leaned down and whispered: "I will speak now."
+
+Then the eyes opened, and a smile faintly flickered at the mouth.
+
+"I will speak now," Soolsby said again into the old man's ear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE VOICE THROUGH THE DOOR
+
+That night Soolsby tapped at the door of the lighted laboratory of the
+Cloistered House where Lord Eglington was at work; opened it, peered in,
+and stepped inside.
+
+With a glass retort in his hand Eglington faced him.  "What's this--what
+do you want?" he demanded.
+
+"I want to try an experiment," answered Soolsby grimly.
+
+"Ah, a scientific turn!" rejoined Eglington coolly--looking at him
+narrowly, however.  He was conscious of danger of some kind.
+
+Then for a minute neither spoke.  Now that Soolsby had come to the moment
+for which he had waited for so many ,years, the situation was not what he
+had so often prefigured.  The words he had chosen long ago were gone from
+his memory; in his ignorance of what had been a commonplace to Soolsby's
+dark reflection so long, the man he had meant to bring low stood up
+before him on his own ground, powerful and unabashed.
+
+Eglington wore a blue smock, and over his eyes was a green shade to
+protect them from the light, but they peered sharply out at the chair-
+maker, and were boldly alive to the unexpected.  He was no physical
+coward, and, in any case, what reason had he for physical fear in the
+presence of this man weakened by vice and age?  Yet ever since he was a
+boy there had existed between them an antagonism which had shown itself
+in many ways.  There had ever been something sinister in Soolsby's
+attitude to his father and himself.
+
+Eglington vaguely knew that now he was to face some trial of mind and
+nerve, but with great deliberation he continued dropping liquid from a
+bottle into the glass retort he carried, his eyes, however, watchful of
+his visitor, who involuntarily stared around the laboratory.
+
+It was fifteen years since Soolsby had been in this room; and then he had
+faced this man's father with a challenge on his tongue such as he meant
+to speak now.  The smell of the chemicals, the carboys filled with acids,
+the queer, tapering glasses with engraved measurements showing against
+the coloured liquids, the great blue bottles, the mortars and pestles,
+the microscopic instruments--all brought back the far-off, acrid scene
+between the late Earl and himself.  Nothing had changed, except that now
+there were wires which gave out hissing sparks, electrical instruments
+invented since the earlier day; except that this man, gently dropping
+acids into the round white bottle upon a crystal which gave off musty
+fumes, was bolder, stronger, had more at stake than the other.
+
+Slowly Eglington moved back to put the retort on a long table against the
+wall, and Soolsby stepped forward till he stood where the electric sparks
+were gently hissing about him.  Now Eglington leaned against the table,
+poured some alcohol on his fingers to cleanse the acid from them, and
+wiped them with a piece of linen, while he looked inquiringly at Soolsby.
+Still, Soolsby did not speak.  Eglington lit a cigarette, and took away
+the shade from his eyes.
+
+"Well, now, what is your experiment?" he asked, "and why bring it here?
+Didn't you know the way to the stables or the scullery?"
+
+"I knew my way better here," answered Soolsby, steadying himself.
+
+"Ah, you've been here often?" asked Eglington nonchalantly, yet feeling
+for the cause of this midnight visit.
+
+"It is fifteen years since I was here, my lord.  Then I came to see the
+Earl of Eglington."
+
+"And so history repeats itself every fifteen years!  You came to see the
+Earl of Eglington then; you come to see the Earl of Eglington again--
+after fifteen years!"
+
+"I come to speak with him that's called the Earl of Eglington."
+
+Eglington's eyes half closed, as though the light hurt them.  "That
+sounds communistic, or is it pure Quakerism?  I believe they used to call
+my father Friend Robert till he backslided.  But you are not a Quaker,
+Soolsby, so why be too familiar?  Or is it merely the way of the old
+family friend?"
+
+"I knew your father before you were born, my lord--he troosted me then."
+
+"So long?  And fifteen years ago--here?"  He felt a menace, vague and
+penetrating.  His eyes were hard and cruel.
+
+"It wasn't a question of troost then; 'twas one of right or wrong--naught
+else."
+
+"Ah--and who was right, and what was wrong?"  At that moment there came a
+tap at the door leading into the living part of the house, and the butler
+entered.  "The doctor--he has used up all his oxygen, my lord.  He begs
+to know if you can give him some for Mr. Claridge.  Mr. Claridge is bad
+to-night."
+
+A sinister smile passed over Eglington's face.  "Who brings the message,
+Garry?"
+
+"A servant--Miss Claridge's, my lord."
+
+An ironical look came into Eglington's eyes; then they softened a little.
+In a moment he placed a jar of oxygen in the butler's hands.
+
+"My compliments to Miss Claridge, and I am happy to find my laboratory of
+use at last to my neighbours," he said, and the door closed upon the man.
+
+Then he came back thoughtfully.  Soolsby had not moved.
+
+"Do you know what oxygen's for, Soolsby?" he asked quizzically.
+
+"No, my lord, I've never heerd tell of it."
+
+"Well, if you brought the top of Ben Lomond to the bottom of a coal-mine
+--breath to the breathless--that's it.
+
+"You've been doing that to Mr. Claridge, my lord?"
+
+"A little oxygen more or less makes all the difference to a man--it
+probably will to neighbour Claridge, Soolsby; and so I've done him a good
+turn."
+
+A grim look passed over Soolsby's face.  "It's the first, I'm thinking,
+my lord, and none too soon; and it'll be the last, I'm thinking, too.
+It's many a year since this house was neighbourly to that."
+
+Eglington's eyes almost closed, as he studied the other's face; then he
+said: "I asked you a little while ago who was right and what was wrong
+when you came to see my father here fifteen years ago.  Well?"
+
+Suddenly a thought flashed into his eyes, and it seemed to course through
+his veins like some anaesthetic, for he grew very still, and a minute
+passed before he added quietly: "Was it a thing between my father and
+Luke Claridge?  There was trouble--well, what was it?"  All at once he
+seemed to rise above the vague anxiety that possessed him, and he
+fingered inquiringly a long tapering glass of acids on the bench beside
+him.  "There's been so much mystery, and I suppose it was nothing, after
+all.  What was it all about?  Or do you know--eh?  Fifteen years ago you
+came to see my father, and now you have come to see me--all in the light
+o' the moon, as it were; like a villain in a play.  Ah, yes, you said it
+was to make an experiment--yet you didn't know what oxygen was!  It's
+foolish making experiments, unless you know what you are playing with,
+Soolsby.  See, here are two glasses."  He held them up.  "If I poured one
+into the other, we'd have an experiment--and you and I would be picked up
+in fragments and carried away in a basket.  And that wouldn't be a
+successful experiment, Soolsby."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that, my lord.  Some things would be put right then."
+
+"H'm, there would be a new Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and--"
+
+"And Claridge Pasha would come back from Egypt, my lord," was the sharp
+interjection.  Suddenly Soolsby's anger flared up, his hands twitched.
+"You had your chance to be a friend to him, my lord.  You promised her
+yonder at the Red Mansion that you would help him--him that never wronged
+you, him you always wronged, and you haven't lifted hand to help him in
+his danger.  A moment since you asked me who was right and what was
+wrong.  You shall know.  If you had treated him right, I'd have held my
+peace, and kept my word to her that's gone these thirty-odd years.  I'll
+hold it no more, and so I told Luke Claridge.  I've been silent, but not
+for your father's sake or yours, for he was as cruel as you, with no
+heart, and a conscience like a pin's head, not big enough for use.  .  .
+Ay, you shall know.  You are no more the Earl of Eglington than me.
+
+"The Earl of Eglington is your elder brother, called David Claridge."
+
+As Soolsby's words poured forth passionately, weighty, Eglington listened
+like one in a dream.  Since this man entered the laboratory fifty reasons
+for his coming had flashed across his mind; he had prepared himself at
+many corners for defence, he had rallied every mental resource, he had
+imagined a dozen dangerous events which his father and Luke Claridge
+shared--with the balance against his father; but this thing was beyond
+all speculation.  Yet on the instant the words were said he had a
+conviction of their inevitable truth.  Even as they were uttered,
+kaleidoscopic memories rushed in, and David's face, figure, personal
+characteristics, flashed before him.  He saw, he felt, the likeness to
+his father and himself; a thousand things were explained that could only
+be explained by this fatal fact launched at him without warning.  It was
+as though, fully armed for his battle of life, he had suddenly been
+stripped of armour and every weapon, and left naked on the field.  But he
+had the mind of the gamester, and the true gamester's self-control.  He
+had taken chances so often that the tornado of ill-luck left him
+standing.
+
+"What proof have you?" he asked quietly.  Soolsby's explicit answer left
+no ground for doubt.  He had not asked the question with any idea of
+finding gaps in the evidence, but rather to find if there were a chance
+for resistance, of escape, anywhere.  The marriage certificate existed;
+identification of James Fetherdon with his father could be established by
+Soolsby and Luke Claridge.
+
+Soolsby and Luke Claridge!  Luke Claridge--he could not help but smile
+cynically, for he was composed and calculating now.  A few minutes ago
+he had sent a jar of oxygen to keep Luke Claridge alive!  But for it one
+enemy to his career, to his future, would be gone.  He did not shrink
+from the thought.  Born a gentleman, there were in him some degenerate
+characteristics which heart could not drown or temperament refine.
+Selfishness was inwoven with every fibre of his nature.
+
+Now, as he stood with eyes fixed on Soolsby, the world seemed to narrow
+down to this laboratory.  It was a vacuum where sensation was suspended,
+and the million facts of ordinary existence disappeared into inactivity.
+There was a fine sense of proportion in it all.  Only the bare essential
+things that concerned him remained: David Claridge was the Earl of
+Eglington, this man before him knew, Luke Claridge knew; and there was
+one thing yet to know!  When he spoke his voice showed no excitement--the
+tones were even, colourless.
+
+"Does he know?"  In these words he acknowledged that he believed the tale
+told him.
+
+Soolsby had expected a different attitude; he was not easier in mind
+because his story had not been challenged.  He blindly felt working in
+the man before him a powerful mind, more powerful because it faced the
+truth unflinchingly; but he knew that this did not mean calm acceptance
+of the consequences.  He, not Eglington, was dazed and embarrassed, was
+not equal to the situation.  He moved uneasily, changed his position.
+
+"Does he know?" Eglington questioned again quietly.  There was no need
+for Eglington to explain who he was.
+
+"Of course he does not know--I said so.  If he knew, do you think he'd be
+in Egypt and you here, my lord?"
+
+Eglington was very quiet.  His intellect more than his passions were now
+at work.
+
+"I am not sure.  You never can tell.  This might not mean much to him.
+He has got his work cut out; he wasn't brought up to this.  What he has
+done is in line with the life he has lived as a pious Quaker.  What good
+would it do to bring him back?  I have been brought up to it; I am used
+to it; I have worked things out 'according to the state of life to which
+I was called.'  Take what I've always had away from me, and I am
+crippled; give him what he never had, and it doesn't work into his
+scheme.  It would do him no good and me harm--Where's the use?  Besides,
+I am still my father's son.  Don't you see how unreasonable you are?
+Luke Claridge was right.  He knew that he and his belonged to a different
+sphere.  He didn't speak.  Why do you speak now after all these years
+when we are all set in our grooves?  It's silly to disturb us, Soolsby."
+
+The voice was low, persuasive, and searching; the mind was working as it
+had never worked before, to achieve an end by peaceful means, when war
+seemed against him.  And all the time he was fascinated by the fact that
+Soolsby's hand was within a few inches of a live electric wire, which, if
+he touched, would probably complete "the experiment" he had come to make;
+and what had been the silence of a generation would continue
+indefinitely.  It was as though Fate had deliberately tempted him and
+arranged the necessary conditions, for Soolsby's feet were in a little
+pool of liquid which had been spilled on the floor--the experiment was
+exact and real.
+
+For minutes he had watched Soolsby's hand near the wire-had watched as he
+talked, and his talk was his argument for non-interference against
+warning the man who had come to destroy him and his career.  Why had Fate
+placed that hand so near the wire there, and provided the other perfect
+conditions for tragedy?  Why should he intervene?  It would never have
+crossed his mind to do Soolsby harm, yet here, as the man's arm was
+stretched out to strike him, Fate offered an escape.  Luke Claridge was
+stricken with paralysis, no doubt would die; Soolsby alone stood in his
+way.
+
+"You see, Soolsby, it has gone on too long," he added, in a low,
+penetrating tone.  "It would be a crime to alter things now.  Give him
+the earldom and the estates, and his work in Egypt goes to pieces; he
+will be spoiled for all he wants to do.  I've got my faults, but, on the
+whole, I'm useful, and I play my part here, as I was born to it, as well
+as most.  Anyhow, it's no robbery for me to have what has been mine by
+every right except the accident of being born after him.  I think you'll
+see that you will do a good thing to let it all be.  Luke Claridge, if he
+was up and well, wouldn't thank you for it--have you got any right to
+give him trouble, too?  Besides, I've saved his life to-night, and. . . .
+and perhaps I might save yours, Soolsby, if it was in danger."
+
+Soolsby's hand had moved slightly.  It was only an inch from the wire.
+For an instant the room was terribly still.
+
+An instant, and it might be too late.  An instant, and Soolsby would be
+gone.  Eglington watched the hand which had been resting on the table
+turn slowly over to the wire.  Why should he intervene?  Was it his
+business?  This thing was not his doing.  Destiny had laid the train of
+circumstance and accident, and who was stronger than Destiny?  In spite
+of himself his eyes fixed themselves on Soolsby's hand.  It was but a
+hair's breadth from the wire.  The end would come now.  Suddenly a voice
+was heard outside the door.  "Eglington!" it called.
+
+Soolsby started, his hand drew spasmodically away from the wire, and he
+stepped back quickly.
+
+The door opened, and Hylda entered.
+
+"Mr. Claridge is dead, Eglington," she said.  Destiny had decided.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+"I OWE YOU NOTHING"
+
+Beside the grave under the willow-tree another grave had been made.  It
+was sprinkled with the fallen leaves of autumn.  In the Red Mansion
+Faith's delicate figure moved forlornly among relics of an austere,
+beloved figure vanished from the apricot-garden and the primitive
+simplicity of wealth combined with narrow thought.
+
+Since her father's death, the bereaved girl had been occupied by matters
+of law and business, by affairs of the estate; but the first pressure was
+over, long letters had been written to David which might never reach him;
+and now, when the strain was withdrawn, the gentle mind was lost in a
+grey mist of quiet suffering.  In Hamley there were but two in whom she
+had any real comfort and help--Lady Eglington and the old chair-maker.
+Of an afternoon or evening one or the other was to be seen in the long
+high-wainscoted room, where a great fire burned, or in the fruitless
+garden where the breeze stirred the bare branches.
+
+Almost as deep a quiet brooded in the Cloistered House as in the home
+where mourning enjoined movement in a minor key.  Hylda had not recovered
+wholly from the illness which had stricken her down on that day in London
+when she had sought news of David from Eglington, at such cost to her
+peace and health and happiness.  Then had come her slow convalescence in
+Hamley, and long days of loneliness, in which Eglington seemed to retreat
+farther and farther from her inner life.  Inquiries had poured in from
+friends in town, many had asked to come and see her; flowers came from
+one or two who loved her benignly, like Lord Windlehurst; and now and
+then she had some cheerful friend with her who cared for music or could
+sing; and then the old home rang; but she was mostly alone, and Eglington
+was kept in town by official business the greater part of each week.  She
+did not gain strength as quickly as she ought to have done, and this was
+what brought the Duchess of Snowdon down on a special mission one day of
+early November.
+
+Ever since the night she had announced Luke Claridge's death to
+Eglington, had discovered Soolsby with him, had seen the look in her
+husband's face and caught the tension of the moment on which she had
+broken, she had been haunted by a hovering sense of trouble.  What had
+Soolsby been doing in the laboratory at that time of night?  What was the
+cause of this secret meeting?  All Hamley knew--she had long known--how
+Luke Claridge had held the Cloistered House in abhorrence, and she knew
+also that Soolsby worshipped David and Faith, and, whatever the cause of
+the family antipathy, championed it.  She was conscious of a shadow
+somewhere, and behind it all was the name of David's father, James
+Fetherdon.  That last afternoon when she had talked with him, and he had
+told her of his life, she had recalled the name as one she had seen or
+heard, and it had floated into her mind at last that she had seen it
+among the papers and letters of the late Countess of Eglington.
+
+As the look in Eglington's face the night she came upon him and Soolsby
+in the laboratory haunted her, so the look in her own face had haunted
+Soolsby.  Her voice announcing Luke Claridge's death had suddenly opened
+up a new situation to him.  It stunned him; and afterwards, as he saw
+Hylda with Faith in the apricot-garden, or walking in the grounds of the
+Cloistered House hour after hour alone or with her maid, he became vexed
+by a problem greater than had yet perplexed him.  It was one thing to
+turn Eglington out of his lands and home and title; it was another thing
+to strike this beautiful being, whose smile had won him from the first,
+whose voice, had he but known, had saved his life.  Perhaps the truth in
+some dim way was conveyed to him, for he came to think of her a little as
+he thought of Faith.
+
+Since the moment when he had left the laboratory and made his way to the
+Red Mansion, he and Eglington had never met face to face; and he avoided
+a meeting.  He was not a blackmailer, he had no personal wrongs to
+avenge, he had not sprung the bolt of secrecy for evil ends; and when he
+saw the possible results of his disclosure, he was unnerved.  His mind
+had seen one thing only, the rights of "Our Man," the wrong that had been
+done him and his mother; but now he saw how the sword of justice, which
+he had kept by his hand these many years, would cut both ways.  His mind
+was troubled, too, that he had spoken while yet Luke Claridge lived, and
+so broken his word to Mercy Claridge.  If he had but waited till the old
+man died--but one brief half-hour--his pledge would have been kept.
+Nothing had worked out wholly as he expected.  The heavens had not
+fallen.  The "second-best lordship" still came and went, the wheels went
+round as usual.  There was no change; yet, as he sat in his hut and
+looked down into the grounds of the Cloistered House, he kept saying to
+himself.
+
+"It had to be told.  It's for my lord now.  He knows the truth.  I'll
+wait and see.  It's for him to do right by Our Man that's beyond and
+away."
+
+The logic and fairness of this position, reached after much thinking,
+comforted him.  He had done his duty so far.  If, in the end, the
+"second-best lordship" failed to do his part, hid the truth from the
+world, refused to do right by his half-brother, the true Earl, then would
+be time to act again.  Also he waited for word out of Egypt; and he had a
+superstitious belief that David would return, that any day might see him
+entering the door of the Red Mansion.
+
+Eglington himself was haunted by a spectre which touched his elbow by
+day, and said: "You are not the Earl of Eglington," and at night laid a
+clammy finger on his forehead, waking him, and whispering in his ear:
+"If Soolsby had touched the wire, all would now be well!"  And as deep as
+thought and feeling in him lay, he felt that Fate had tricked him--Fate
+and Hylda.  If Hylda had not come at that crucial instant, the
+chairmaker's but on the hill would be empty.  Why had not Soolsby told
+the world the truth since?  Was the man waiting to see what course he
+himself would take?  Had the old chair-maker perhaps written the truth
+to the Egyptian--to his brother David.
+
+His brother!  The thought irritated every nerve in him.  No note of
+kindness or kinship or blood stirred in him.  If, before, he had had
+innate antagonism and a dark, hovering jealousy, he had a black
+repugnance now--the antipathy of the lesser to the greater nature,
+of the man in the wrong to the man in the right.
+
+And behind it all was the belief that his wife had set David above him--
+by how much or in what fashion he did not stop to consider; but it made
+him desire that death and the desert would swallow up his father's son
+and leave no trace behind.
+
+Policy?  His work in the Foreign Office now had but one policy so far as
+Egypt was concerned.  The active sophistry in him made him advocate non-
+intervention in Egyptian affairs as diplomatic wisdom, though it was but
+personal purpose; and he almost convinced himself that he was acting from
+a national stand-point.  Kaid and Claridge Pasha pursued their course of
+civilisation in the Soudan, and who could tell what danger might not
+bring forth?  If only Soolsby held his peace yet a while!
+
+Did Faith know?  Luke Claridge was gone without speaking, but had Soolsby
+told Faith?  How closely had he watched the faces round him at Luke
+Claridge's funeral, to see if they betrayed any knowledge!
+
+Anxious days had followed that night in the laboratory.  His boundless
+egotism had widened the chasm between Hylda and himself, which had been
+made on the day when she fell ill in London, with Lacey's letter in her
+hand.  It had not grown less in the weeks that followed.  He nursed a
+grievance which had, so far as he knew, no foundation in fact; he was
+vaguely jealous of a man--his brother--thousands of miles away; he was
+not certain how far Hylda had pierced the disguise of sincerity which he
+himself had always worn, or how far she understood him.  He thought that
+she shrank from what she had seen of his real self, much or little, and
+he was conscious of so many gifts and abilities and attractive personal
+qualities that he felt a sense of injury.  Yet what would his position
+be without her?  Suppose David should return and take the estates and
+titles, and suppose that she should close her hand upon her fortune and
+leave him, where would he be?
+
+He thought of all this as he sat in his room at the Foreign Office and
+looked over St. James's Park, his day's work done.  He was suddenly
+seized by a new-born anxiety, for he had been so long used to the open
+purse and the unchecked stream of gold, had taken it so much as a matter
+of course, as not to realise the possibility of its being withdrawn.
+He was conscious of a kind of meanness and ugly sordidness in the
+suggestion; but the stake--his future, his career, his position in the
+world--was too high to allow him to be too chivalrous.  His sense of the
+real facts was perverted.  He said to himself that he must be practical.
+
+Moved by the new thought, he seized a time-table and looked up the
+trains.  He had been ten days in town, receiving every morning a little
+note from Hylda telling of what she had done each day; a calm, dutiful
+note, written without pretence, and out of a womanly affection with which
+she surrounded the man who, it seemed once--such a little while ago--must
+be all in all to her.  She had no element of pretence in her.  What she
+could give she gave freely, and it was just what it appeared to be.  He
+had taken it all as his due, with an underlying belief that, if he chose
+to make love to her again, he could blind her to all else in the world.
+Hurt vanity and egotism and jealousy had prevented him from luring her
+back to that fine atmosphere in which he had hypnotised her so few years
+ago.  But suddenly, as he watched the swans swimming in the pond below, a
+new sense of approaching loss, all that Hylda had meant in his march and
+progress, came upon him; and he hastened to return to Hamley.
+
+Getting out of the train at Heddington, he made up his mind to walk home
+by the road that David had taken on his return from Egypt, and he left
+word at the station that he would send for his luggage.
+
+His first objective was Soolsby's hut, and, long before he reached it,
+darkness had fallen.  From a light shining through the crack of the blind
+he knew that Soolsby was at home.  He opened the door and entered without
+knocking.  Soolsby was seated at a table, a map and a newspaper spread
+out before him.  Egypt and David, always David and Egypt!
+
+Soolsby got to his feet slowly, his eyes fixed inquiringly on his
+visitor.
+
+"I didn't knock," said Eglington, taking off his greatcoat and reaching
+for a chair; then added, as he seated himself: "Better sit down,
+Soolsby."
+
+After a moment he continued: "Do you mind my smoking?"
+
+Soolsby did not reply, but sat down again.  He watched Eglington light a
+cigar and stretch out his hands to the wood fire with an air of comfort.
+
+A silence followed.  Eglington appeared to forget the other's presence,
+and to occupy himself with thoughts that glimmered in the fire.
+
+At last Soolsby said moodily: "What have you come for, my lord?"
+
+"Oh, I am my lord still, am I?" Eglington returned lazily.  "Is it a
+genealogical tree you are studying there?"  He pointed to the map.
+
+"I've studied your family tree with care, as you should know, my lord;
+and a map of Egypt"--he tapped the parchment before him--"goes well with
+it.  And see, my lord, Egypt concerns you too.  Lord Eglington is there,
+and 'tis time he was returning-ay, 'tis time."
+
+There was a baleful look in Soolsby's eyes.  Whatever he might think,
+whatever considerations might arise at other times, a sinister feeling
+came upon him when Eglington was with him.
+
+"And, my lord," he went on, "I'd be glad to know that you've sent for
+him, and told him the truth."
+
+"Have you?"  Eglington flicked the ash from his cigar, speaking coolly.
+
+Soolsby looked at him with his honest blue eyes aflame, and answered
+deliberately: "I was not for taking your place, my lord.  'Twas my duty
+to tell you, but the rest was between you and the Earl of Eglington."
+
+"That was thoughtful of you, Soolsby.  And Miss Claridge?"
+
+"I told you that night, my lord, that only her father and myself knew;
+and what was then is now."
+
+A look of relief stole across Eglington's face.  "Of course--of course.
+These things need a lot of thought, Soolsby.  One must act with care--
+no haste, no flurry, no mistakes."
+
+"I would not wait too long, my lord, or be too careful."  There was
+menace in the tone.
+
+"But if you go at things blind, you're likely to hurt where you don't
+mean to hurt.  When you're mowing in a field by a school-house, you must
+look out for the children asleep in the grass.  Sometimes the longest way
+round is the shortest way home."
+
+"Do you mean to do it or not, my lord?  I've left it to you as a
+gentleman."
+
+"It's going to upset more than you think, Soolsby.  Suppose he, out there
+in Egypt"--he pointed again to the map--"doesn't thank me for the
+information.  Suppose he says no, and--"
+
+"Right's right.  Give him the chance, my lord.  How can you know, unless
+you tell him the truth?"
+
+"Do you like living, Soolsby?"
+
+"Do you want to kill me, my lord?"
+
+There was a dark look in Eglington's face.  "But answer me, do you want
+to live?"
+
+"I want to live long enough to see the Earl of Eglington in his own
+house."
+
+"Well, I've made that possible.  The other night when you were telling me
+your little story, you were near sending yourself into eternity--as near
+as I am knocking this ash off my cigar."  His little finger almost
+touched the ash.  "Your hand was as near touching a wire charged with
+death.  I saw it.  It would have been better for me if you had gone; but
+I shut off the electricity.  Suppose I hadn't, could I have been blamed?
+It would have been an accident.  Providence did not intervene; I did.
+You owe me something, Soolsby."
+
+Soolsby stared at him almost blindly for a moment.  A mist was before his
+eyes; but through the mist, though he saw nothing of this scene in which
+he now was, he saw the laboratory, and himself and Eglington, and
+Eglington's face as it peered at him, and, just before the voice called
+outside, Eglington's eyes fastened on his hand.  It all flashed upon him
+now, and he saw himself starting back at the sound of the voice.
+
+Slowly he got up now, went to the door, and opened it.  "My lord, it is
+not true," he said.  "You have not spoken like a gentleman.  It was my
+lady's voice that saved me.  This is my castle, my lord--you lodge
+yonder."  He pointed down into the darkness where the lights of the
+village shone.  "I owe you nothing.  I pay my debts.  Pay yours, my lord,
+to him that's beyond and away."
+
+Eglington kept his countenance as he drew on his great-coat and slowly
+passed from the house.
+
+"I ought to have let you die, Soolsby.  Y'ou'll think better of this
+soon.  But it's quite right to leave the matter to me.  It may take a
+little time, but everything will come right.  Justice shall be done.
+Well, good night, Soolsby.  You live too much alone, and imagination
+is a bad thing for the lonely.  Good night-good night."
+
+Going down the hill quickly, he said to himself: "A sort of second sight
+he had about that wire.  But time is on my side, time and the Soudan--
+and 'The heathen in his blindness.  .  .  .' I will keep what is mine.
+I will keep it!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE AWAKENING
+
+In her heart of hearts Hylda had not greatly welcomed the Duchess of
+Snowdon to Hamley.  There was no one whose friendship she prized more;
+but she was passing through a phase of her life when she felt that she
+was better apart, finding her own path by those intuitions and
+perceptions which belonged to her own personal experience.  She vaguely
+felt, what all realise sooner or later, that we must live our dark hours
+alone.
+
+Yet the frank downright nature of the once beautiful, now faded, Duchess,
+the humorous glimmer in the pale-blue eyes, the droll irony and dry truth
+of her speech, appealed to Hylda, made her smile a warm greeting when she
+would rather have been alone.  For, a few days before, she had begun a
+quest which had absorbed her, fascinated her.  The miner, finding his way
+across the gap of a reef to pick up the vein of quartz at some distant
+and uncertain point, could not have been more lost to the world than was
+the young wife searching for a family skeleton, indefinitely embodied in
+her imagination by the name, James Fetherdon.
+
+Pile after pile of papers and letters of the late Earl and his Countess
+had passed through her hands from chaos to order.  As she had read, hour
+after hour, the diaries of the cold, blue-eyed woman, Sybil Eglington,
+who had lived without love of either husband or son, as they, in turn,
+lived without love of each other, she had been overwhelmed by the
+revelation of a human heart, whose powers of expression were smothered by
+a shy and awkward temperament.  The late Countess's letters were the
+unclothing of a heart which had never expanded to the eyes of those whose
+love would have broken up a natural reserve, which became at last a proud
+coldness, and gave her a reputation for lack of feeling that she carried
+to her grave.
+
+In the diaries which Hylda unearthed--the Countess had died suddenly--
+was the muffled cry of a soul tortured through different degrees of
+misunderstanding; from the vague pain of suffered indifference, of being
+left out of her husband's calculations, to the blank neglect narrowing
+her life down to a tiny stream of duty, which was finally lost in the
+sands.  She had died abroad, and alone, save for her faithful maid, who,
+knowing the chasm that lay between her mistress and her lord, had brought
+her letters and papers back to the Cloistered House, and locked them away
+with all the other papers and correspondence which the Countess had
+accumulated.
+
+Among these papers was a letter to the late Lord Eglington written the
+day before she died.  In the haste and confusion ensuing on her death,
+the maid had not seen it.  It had never reached his hands, but lay in a
+pocket of the dead woman's writing-portfolio, which Hylda had explored
+without discovering.  Only a few hours, however, before the Duchess of
+Snowdon came, Hylda had found again an empty envelope on which was
+written the name, James Fetherdon.  The writing on the envelope was that
+of Sybil Lady Eglington.
+
+When she discovered the envelope, a sense of mystery and premonition
+possessed her.  What was the association between the Countess of
+Eglington and James Fetherdon, the father of David Claridge?  In vain she
+searched among the voluminous letters and papers, for it would seem that
+the dead woman had saved every letter she received, and kept copies of
+numberless letters she had written.  But she had searched without avail.
+Even the diaries, curiously frank and without reserve, never mentioned
+the name, so far as she could find, though here and there were strange
+allusive references, hints of a trouble that weighed her down, phrases of
+exasperation and defiance.  One phrase, or the idea in it, was, however,
+much repeated in the diaries during the course of years, and towards the
+last almost feverishly emphasised--"Why should I bear it for one who
+would bear nothing for me, for his sake, who would do nothing for my
+sake?  Is it only the mother in me, not the love in me?"
+
+These words were haunting Hylda's brain when the telegram from the
+Duchess of Snowdon came.  They followed her to Heddington, whither she
+went in the carriage to bring her visitor to Hamley, and kept repeating
+themselves at the back of her mind through the cheerful rallying of the
+Duchess, who spread out the wings of good-humour and motherly freedom
+over her.
+
+After all, it was an agreeable thing to be taken possession of, and "put
+in her proper place," as the Duchess said; made to understand that her
+own affairs were not so important, after all; and that it was far more
+essential to hear the charming gossip about the new and most popular
+Princess of Wales, or the quarrel between Dickens and Thackeray.  Yet,
+after dinner, in the little sitting-room, where the Duchess, in a white
+gown with great pink bows, fitter for a girl fresh from Confirmation, and
+her cheeks with their fixed colour, which changed only at the discretion
+of her maid, babbled of nothing that mattered, Hylda's mind kept turning
+to the book of life an unhappy woman had left behind her.  The sitting-
+room had been that of the late Countess also, and on the wall was an oil-
+painting of her, stately and distant and not very alluring, though the
+mouth had a sweetness which seemed unable to break into a smile.
+
+"What was she really like--that wasn't her quite, was it?" asked Hylda,
+at last, leaning her chin on the hand which held the 'cello she had been
+playing.
+
+"Oh, yes, it's Sybil Eglington, my dear, but done in wood; and she wasn't
+the graven image that makes her out to be.  That's as most people saw
+her; as the fellow that painted her saw her; but she had another side to
+her.  She disapproved of me rather, because I was squeezing the orange
+dry, and trying to find yesterday's roses in to-morrow's garden.  But she
+didn't shut her door in my face--it's hard to do that to a Duchess; which
+is one of the few advantages of living naked in the street, as it were,
+with only the strawberry leaves to clothe you.  No, Sybil Eglington was a
+woman who never had her chance.  Your husband's forbears were difficult,
+my dear.  They didn't exactly draw you out.  She needed drawing out; and
+her husband drove her back into her corner, where she sulked rather till
+she died--died alone at Wiesbaden, with a German doctor, a stray curate,
+and a stuttering maid to wish her bon voyage.  Yet I fancy she went glad
+enough, for she had no memories, not even an affaire to repent of, and to
+cherish.  La, la!  she wasn't so stupid, Sybil there, and she was an
+ornament to her own sex and the despair of the other.  His Serene
+Highness Heinrich of Saxe-Gunden fancied the task of breaking that ice,
+and he was an adept and an Apollo, but it broke his reputation instead.
+
+"No doubt she is happy now.  I shall probably never see!"
+
+In spite of the poignant nature of the talk, Hylda could not but smile at
+the last words.
+
+"Don't despair," she rejoined; "one star differeth from another star in
+glory, but that is no reason why they should not be on visiting terms."
+
+"My dear, you may laugh--you may laugh, but I am sixty-five, and I am not
+laughing at the idea of what company I may be obliged to keep presently.
+In any case I'm sure I shall not be comfortable.  If I'm where she is, I
+shall be dull; if I'm where her husband is, I'll have no reputation; and
+if there is one thing I want, it is a spotless reputation--sometime."
+
+Hylda laughed--the manner and the voice were so droll--but her face
+saddened too, and her big eyes with the drooping lashes looked up
+pensively at the portrait of her husband's mother.
+
+"Was it ever a happy family, or a lucky family?" she asked.
+
+"It's lucky now, and it ought to be happy now," was the meaning reply.
+
+Hylda made no answer, but caught the strings of the 'cello lightly, and
+shook her head reprovingly, with a smile meant to be playful.  For a
+moment she played, humming to herself, and then the Duchess touched the
+hand that was drawing the bow softly across the strings.  She had behind
+her garishness a gift for sympathy and a keen intuition, delicacy, and
+allusiveness.  She knew what to say and what to leave unsaid, when her
+heart was moved.
+
+"My darling," she said now, "you are not quite happy; but that is because
+you don't allow yourself to get well.  You've never recovered from your
+attack last summer; and you won't, until you come out into the world
+again and see people.  This autumn you ought to have been at Homburg or
+at Aix, where you'd take a little cure of waters and a great deal of cure
+of people.  You were born to bask in friendship and the sun, and to draw
+from the world as much as you deserve, a little from many, for all you
+give in return.  Because, dearest, you are a very agreeable person, with
+enough wit and humanity to make it worth the world's while to conspire to
+make you do what will give it most pleasure, and let yourself get most--
+and that's why I've come."
+
+"What a person of importance I am!" answered Hylda, with a laugh that
+was far from mirthful, though she caught the plump, wrinkled little hand
+of the Duchess and pressed it.  "But really I'm getting well here fast.
+I'm very strong again.  It is so restful, and one's days go by so
+quietly."
+
+"Yet, I'm not sure that it's rest you want.  I don't think it is.  You
+want tonics--men and women and things.  Monte Carlo would do you a world
+of good--I'd go with you.  Eglington gambles here"--she watched Hylda
+closely--"why shouldn't you gamble there?"
+
+"Eglington gambles?"  Hylda's face took on a frightened look, then it
+cleared again, and she smiled.  "Oh, of course, with international
+affairs, you mean.  Well, I must stay here and be the croupier."
+
+"Nonsense!  Eglington is his own croupier.  Besides, he is so much in
+London, and you so much here.  You sit with the distaff; he throws the
+dice."
+
+Hylda's lips tightened a little.  Her own inner life, what Eglington was
+to her or she to Eglington, was for the ears of no human being, however
+friendly.  She had seen little of him of late, but in one sense that had
+been a relief, though she would have done anything to make that feeling
+impossible.  His rather precise courtesy and consideration, when he was
+with her, emphasised the distance between "the first fine careless
+rapture" and this grey quiet.  And, strange to say, though in the first
+five years after the Cairo days and deeds, Egypt seemed an infinite space
+away, and David a distant, almost legendary figure, now Egypt seemed but
+beyond the door--as though, opening it, she would stand near him who
+represented the best of all that she might be capable of thinking.  Yet
+all the time she longed for Eglington to come and say one word, which
+would be like touching the lever of the sluice-gates of her heart, to let
+loose the flood.  As the space grew between her and Eglington, her spirit
+trembled, she shrank back, because she saw that sea towards which she was
+drifting.
+
+As she did not answer the last words of the Duchess, the latter said
+presently: "When do you expect Eglington?"
+
+"Not till the week-end; it is a busy week with him," Hylda answered; then
+added hastily, though she had not thought of it till this moment: "I
+shall probably go up to town with you to-morrow."
+
+She did not know that Eglington was already in the house, and had given
+orders to the butler that she was not to be informed of his arrival for
+the present.
+
+"Well, if you get that far, will you come with me to the Riviera, or to
+Florence, or Sicily--or Cairo?" the other asked, adjusting her gold-
+brown wig with her babyish hands.
+
+Cairo!  Cairo!  A light shot up into Hylda's eyes.  The Duchess had
+spoken without thought, but, as she spoke, she watched the sudden change
+in Hylda.  What did it mean?  Cairo--why should Cairo have waked her so?
+Suddenly she recalled certain vague references of Lord Windlehurst, and,
+for the first time, she associated Hylda with Claridge Pasha in a way
+which might mean much, account for much, in this life she was leading.
+
+"Perhaps!  Perhaps!" answered Hylda abstractedly, after a moment.
+
+The Duchess got to her feet.  She had made progress.  She would let her
+medicine work.
+
+"I'm going to bed, my dear.  I'm sixty-five, and I take my sleep when I
+can get it.  Think it over, Sicily--Cairo!"
+
+She left the room, saying to herself that Eglington was a fool, and that
+danger was ahead.  "But I hold a red light--poor darling!" she said
+aloud, as she went up the staircase.  She did not know that Eglington,
+standing in a deep doorway, heard her, and seized upon the words eagerly
+and suspiciously, and turned them over in his mind.
+
+Below, at the desk where Eglington's mother used to write, Hylda sat with
+a bundle of letters before her.  For some moments she opened, glanced
+through them, and put them aside.  Presently she sat back in her chair,
+thinking--her mind was invaded by the last words of the Duchess; and
+somehow they kept repeating themselves with the words in the late
+Countess's diary: "Is it only the mother in me, not the love in me?"
+Mechanically her hand moved over the portfolio of the late Countess, and
+it involuntarily felt in one of its many pockets.  Her hand came upon a
+letter.  This had remained when the others had been taken out.  It was
+addressed to the late Earl, and was open.  She hesitated a moment, then,
+with a strange premonition and a tightening of her heart-strings, she
+spread it out and read it.
+
+At first she could scarcely see because of the mist in her eyes; but
+presently her sight cleared, and she read quickly, her cheeks burning
+with excitement, her heart throbbing violently.  The letter was the last
+expression of a disappointed and barren life.  The slow, stammering
+tongue of an almost silent existence had found the fulness of speech.
+The fountains of the deep had been broken up, and Sybil Eglington's
+repressed emotions, undeveloped passions, tortured by mortal sufferings,
+and refined and vitalised by the atmosphere blown in upon her last hours
+from the Hereafter, were set free, given voice and power at last.
+
+The letter reviewed the life she had lived with her husband during
+twenty-odd years, reproved herself for not speaking out and telling him
+his faults at the beginning, and for drawing in upon herself, when she
+might have compelled him to a truer understanding; and, when all that was
+said, called him to such an account as only the dying might make--the
+irrevocable, disillusionising truth which may not be altered, the
+poignant record of failure and its causes.
+
+     ".  .  .  I could not talk well, I never could, as a girl," the
+     letter ran; "and you could talk like one inspired, and so
+     speciously, so overwhelmingly, that I felt I could say nothing in
+     disagreement, not anything but assent; while all the time I felt how
+     hollow was so much you said--a cloak of words to cover up the real
+     thought behind.  Before I knew the truth, I felt the shadow of
+     secrecy in your life.  When you talked most, I felt you most
+     secretive, and the feeling slowly closed the door upon all frankness
+     and sympathy and open speech between us.  I was always shy and self-
+     conscious and self-centred, and thought little of myself; and I
+     needed deep love and confidence and encouragement to give out what
+     was in me.  I gave nothing out, nothing to you that you wanted, or
+     sought for, or needed.  You were complete, self-contained.  Harry,
+     my beloved babe Harry, helped at first; but, as the years went on,
+     he too began to despise me for my little intellect and slow
+     intelligence, and he grew to be like you in all things--and
+     secretive also, though I tried so hard to be to him what a mother
+     should be.  Oh, Bobby, Bobby--I used to call you that in the days
+     before we were married, and I will call you that now when all is
+     over and done--why did you not tell me all?  Why did you not tell me
+     that my boy, my baby Harry, was not your only child, that there had
+     been another wife, and that your eldest son was alive?
+
+     "I know all.  I have known all for years.  The clergyman who married
+     you to Mercy Claridge was a distant relative of my mother's, and
+     before he died he told me.  When you married her, he knew you only
+     as James Fetherdon, but, years afterwards, he saw and recognised
+     you.  He held his peace then, but at last he came to me.  And I did
+     not speak.  I was not strong enough, nor good enough, to face the
+     trouble of it all.  I could not endure the scandal, to see my own
+     son take the second place--he is so brilliant and able and
+     unscrupulous, like yourself; but, oh, so sure of winning a great
+     place in the world, surer than yourself ever was, he is so
+     calculating and determined and ambitious!  And though he loves me
+     little, as he loves you little, too, yet he is my son, and for what
+     he is we are both responsible, one way or another; and I had not the
+     courage to give him the second place, and the Quaker, David
+     Claridge, the first place.  Why Luke Claridge, his grandfather,
+     chose the course he did, does not concern me, no more than why you
+     chose secrecy, and kept your own firstborn legitimate son, of whom
+     you might well be proud, a stranger to you and his rights all these
+     years.  Ah, Eglington, you never knew what love was, you never had
+     a heart--experiment, subterfuge, secrecy, 'reaping where you had
+     not sowed, and gathering where you had not strawed.'  Always,
+     experiment, experiment, experiment!
+
+     "I shall be gone in a few hours--I feel it, but before I go I must
+     try to do right, and to warn you.  I have had such bad dreams about
+     you and Harry--they haunt me--that I am sure you will suffer
+     terribly, will have some awful tragedy, unless you undo what was
+     done long ago, and tell the truth to the world, and give your titles
+     and estates where they truly belong.  Near to death, seeing how
+     little life is, and how much right is in the end, I am sure that I
+     was wrong in holding my peace; for Harry cannot prosper with this
+     black thing behind him, and you cannot die happy if you smother up
+     the truth.  Night after night I have dreamed of you in your
+     laboratory, a vague, dark, terrifying dream of you in that
+     laboratory which I have hated so.  It has always seemed to me the
+     place where some native evil and cruelty in your blood worked out
+     its will.  I know I am an ignorant woman, with no brain, but God has
+     given me clear sight at the last, and the things I see are true
+     things, and I must warn you.  Remember that.  .  .  ."
+
+The letter ended there.  She had been interrupted or seized with illness,
+and had never finished it, and had died a few hours afterwards; and the
+letter was now, for the first time, read by her whom it most concerned,
+into whose heart and soul the words sank with an immitigable pain and
+agonised amazement.  A few moments with this death-document had
+transformed Hylda's life.
+
+Her husband and--and David, were sons of the same father; and the name
+she bore, the home in which she was living, the estates the title
+carried, were not her husband's, but another's--David's.  She fell back
+in her chair, white and faint, but, with a great effort, she conquered
+the swimming weakness which blinded her.  Sons of the same father!  The
+past flashed before her, the strange likeness she had observed, the trick
+of the head, the laugh, the swift gesture, the something in the voice.
+She shuddered as she had done in reading the letter.  But they were
+related only in name, in some distant, irreconcilable way--in a way
+which did not warrant the sudden scarlet flush that flooded her face.
+Presently she recovered herself.  She--what did she suffer, compared
+with her who wrote this revelation of a lifetime of pain, of bitter and
+torturing knowledge!  She looked up at the picture on the wall, at the
+still, proud, emotionless face, the conventional, uninspired personality,
+behind which no one had seen, which had agonised alone till the last.
+With what tender yet pitiless hand had she laid bare the lives of her
+husband and her son!  How had the neglected mother told the bitter truth
+of him to whom she had given birth!  "So brilliant and able, and
+unscrupulous, like yourself; but, oh, sure of winning a great place in
+the world .  .  .  so calculating and determined and ambitious.  .  .  .
+That laboratory which I have hated so.  It has always seemed to me the
+place where some native evil and cruelty in your blood worked out its
+will.  .  .  ."
+
+With a deep-drawn sigh Hylda said to herself: "If I were dying to-morrow,
+would I say that?  She loved them so--at first must have loved them so;
+and yet this at the last!  And I--oh, no, no, no!"  She looked at a
+portrait of Eglington on the table near, touched it caressingly, and
+added, with a sob in her voice: "Oh, Harry, no, it is not true!  It is
+not native evil and cruelty in your blood.  It has all been a mistake.
+You will do right.  We will do right, Harry.  You will suffer, it will
+hurt, the lesson will be hard--to give up what has meant so much to you;
+but we will work it out together, you and I, my very dear.  Oh, say that
+we shall, that....  " She suddenly grew silent.  A tremor ran through
+her, she became conscious of his presence near her, and turned, as though
+he were behind her.  There was nothing.  Yet she felt him near, and,
+as she did so, the soul-deep feeling with which she had spoken to the
+portrait fled.  Why was it that, so often, when absent from him, her
+imagination helped her to make excuses for him, inspired her to press the
+real truth out of sight, and to make believe that he was worthy of a love
+which, but through some inner fault of her own, might be his altogether,
+and all the love of which he was capable might be hers?
+
+She felt him near her, and the feelings possessing her a moment before
+slowly chilled and sank away.  Instinctively her eyes glanced towards the
+door.  She saw the handle turn, and she slipped the letter inside the
+portfolio again.
+
+The door opened briskly now, and Eglington entered with what his enemies
+in the newspaper press had called his "professional smile"--a criticism
+which had angered his wife, chiefly because it was so near the truth.  He
+smiled.  Smiling was part of his equipment, and was for any one at any
+time that suited him.
+
+Her eyes met his, and he noted in her something that he had never seen
+before.  Something had happened.  The Duchess of Snowdon was in the
+house; had it anything to do with her?  Had she made trouble?  There was
+trouble enough without her.  He came forward, took Hylda's hand and
+kissed it, then kissed her on the cheek.  As he did so, she laid a hand
+on his arm with a sudden impulse, and pressed it.  Though his presence
+had chilled the high emotions of a few moments before, yet she had to
+break to him a truth which would hurt him, dismay him, rob his life of so
+much that helped it; and a sudden protective, maternal sense was roused
+in her, reached out to shelter him as he faced his loss and the call of
+duty.
+
+"You have just come?" she said, in a voice that, to herself, seemed far
+away.
+
+"I have been here some hours," he answered.  Secrecy again--always the
+thing that had chilled the dead woman, and laid a cold hand upon herself
+--"I felt the shadow of secrecy in your life.  When you talked most I
+felt you most secretive, and the feeling slowly closed the door upon all
+frankness and sympathy and open speech between us."
+
+"Why did you not see me--dine with me?" she asked.  "What can the
+servants think?"  Even in such a crisis the little things had place--
+habit struck its note in the presence of her tragedy.
+
+"You had the Duchess of Snowdon, and we are not precisely congenial;
+besides, I had much to do in the laboratory.  I'm working for that new
+explosive of which I told you.  There's fame and fortune in it, and I'm
+on the way.  I feel it coming"--his eyes sparkled a little.  "I made it
+right with the servants; so don't be apprehensive."
+
+"I have not seen you for nearly a week.  It doesn't seem--friendly."
+
+"Politics and science are stern masters," he answered gaily.
+
+"They leave little time for your mistress," she rejoined meaningly.
+
+"Who is my mistress?"
+
+"Well, I am not greatly your wife," she replied.  "I have the dregs of
+your life.  I help you--I am allowed to help you--so little, to share so
+little in the things that matter to you."
+
+"Now, that's imagination and misunderstanding," he rejoined.  "It has
+helped immensely your being such a figure in society, and entertaining
+so much, and being so popular, at any rate until very lately."
+
+"I do not misunderstand," she answered gravely.  "I do not share your
+real life.  I do not help you where your brain works, in the plans and
+purposes and hopes that lie behind all that you do--oh, yes, I know your
+ambitions and what positions you are aiming for; but there is something
+more than that.  There is the object of it all, the pulse of it, the
+machinery down, down deep in your being that drives it all.  Oh, I am not
+a child!  I have some intellect, and I want--I want that we should work
+it out together."
+
+In spite of all that had come and gone, in spite of the dead mother's
+words and all her own convictions, seeing trouble coming upon him, she
+wanted to make one last effort for what might save their lives--her life-
+-from shipwreck in the end.  If she failed now, she foresaw a bitter,
+cynical figure working out his life with a narrowing soul, a hard spirit
+unrelieved by the softening influence of a great love--even yet the woman
+in her had a far-off hope that, where the law had made them one by book
+and scrip, the love which should consecrate such a union, lift it above
+an almost offensive relation, might be theirs.  She did not know how much
+of her heart, of her being, was wandering over the distant sands of
+Egypt, looking for its oasis.  Eglington had never needed or wanted more
+than she had given him--her fortune, her person, her charm, her ability
+to play an express and definite part in his career.  It was this material
+use to which she was so largely assigned, almost involuntarily but none
+the less truly, that had destroyed all of the finer, dearer, more
+delicate intimacy invading his mind sometimes, more or less vaguely,
+where Faith was concerned.  So extreme was his egotism that it had never
+occurred to him, as it had done to the Duchess of Snowdon and Lord
+Windlehurst, that he might lose Hylda herself as well as her fortune;
+that the day might come when her high spirit could bear it no longer.  As
+the Duchess of Snowdon had said: "It would all depend upon the other man,
+whoever he might be."
+
+So he answered her with superficial cheerfulness now; he had not the
+depth of soul to see that they were at a crisis, and that she could bear
+no longer the old method of treating her as though she were a child, to
+be humoured or to be dominated.
+
+"Well, you see all there is," he answered; "you are so imaginative,
+crying for some moon there never was in any sky."
+
+In part he had spoken the truth.  He had no high objects or ends or
+purposes.  He wanted only success somehow or another, and there was no
+nobility of mind or aspiration behind it.  In her heart of hearts she
+knew it; but it was the last cry of her soul to him, seeking, though in
+vain, for what she had never had, could never have.
+
+"What have you been doing?" he added, looking at the desk where she had
+sat, glancing round the room.  "Has the Duchess left any rags on the
+multitude of her acquaintances?  I wonder that you can make yourself
+contented here with nothing to do.  You don't look much stronger.  I'm
+sure you ought to have a change.  My mother was never well here; though,
+for the matter of that, she was never very well anywhere.  I suppose it's
+the laboratory that attracts me here, as it did my father, playing with
+the ancient forces of the world in these Arcadian surroundings--Arcady
+without beauty or Arcadians."  He glanced up at his mother's picture.
+"No, she never liked it--a very silent woman, secretive almost."
+
+Suddenly her eyes flared up.  Anger possessed her.  She choked it down.
+Secretive--the poor bruised soul who had gone to her grave with a broken
+heart!
+
+"She secretive?  No, Eglington," she rejoined gravely, "she was
+congealed.  She lived in too cold an air.  She was not secretive, but yet
+she kept a secret--another's."
+
+Again Eglington had the feeling which possessed him when he entered the
+room.  She had changed.  There was something in her tone, a meaning, he
+had never heard before.  He was startled.  He recalled the words of the
+Duchess as she went up the staircase.
+
+What was it all about?
+
+"Whose secrets did she keep?" he asked, calmly enough.
+
+"Your father's, yours, mine," she replied, in a whisper almost.
+
+"Secret?  What secret?  Good Lord, such mystery!"  He laughed
+mirthlessly.
+
+She came close to him.  "I am sorry--sorry, Harry," she said with
+difficulty.  "It will hurt you, shock you so.  It will be a blow to you,
+but you must bear it."
+
+She tried to speak further, but her heart was beating so violently that
+she could not.  She turned quickly to the portfolio on the desk, drew
+forth the fatal letter, and, turning to the page which contained the
+truth concerning David, handed it to him.  "It is there," she said.
+
+He had great self-control.  Before looking at the page to which she had
+directed his attention, he turned the letter over slowly, fingering the
+pages one by one.  "My mother to my father," he remarked.
+
+Instinctively he knew what it contained.  "You have been reading my
+mother's correspondence," he added in cold reproof.
+
+"Do you forget that you asked me to arrange her papers?" she retorted,
+stung by his suggestion.
+
+"Your imagination is vivid," he exclaimed.  Then he bethought himself
+that, after all, he might sorely need all she could give, if things went
+against him, and that she was the last person he could afford to
+alienate; "but I do remember that I asked you that," he added--"no doubt
+foolishly."
+
+"Read what is there," she broke in, "and you will see that it was not
+foolish, that it was meant to be."  He felt a cold dead hand reaching out
+from the past to strike him; but he nerved himself, and his eyes searched
+the paper with assumed coolness-even with her he must still be acting.
+The first words he saw were: "Why did you not tell me that my boy, my
+baby Harry, was not your only child, and that your eldest son was alive?"
+
+So that was it, after all.  Even his mother knew.  Master of his nerves
+as he was, it blinded him for a moment.  Presently he read on--the whole
+page--and lingered upon the words, that he might have time to think what
+he must say to Hylda.  Nothing of the tragedy of his mother touched him,
+though he was faintly conscious of a revelation of a woman he had never
+known, whose hungering caresses had made him, as a child, rather peevish,
+when a fit of affection was not on him.  Suddenly, as he read the lines
+touching himself, "Brilliant and able and unscrupulous....  and though he
+loves me little, as he loves you little too," his eye lighted up with
+anger, his face became pale--yet he had borne the same truths from Faith
+without resentment, in the wood by the mill that other year.  For a
+moment he stood infuriated, then, going to the fireplace, he dropped the
+letter on the coals, as Hylda, in horror, started forward to arrest his
+hand.
+
+"Oh, Eglington--but no--no!  It is not honourable.  It is proof of all!"
+
+He turned upon her slowly, his face rigid, a strange, cold light in his
+eyes.  "If there is no more proof than that, you need not vex your mind,"
+he said, commanding his voice to evenness.
+
+A bitter anger was on him.  His mother had read him through and through--
+he had not deceived her even; and she had given evidence against him to
+Hylda, who, he had ever thought, believed in him completely.  Now there
+was added to the miserable tale, that first marriage, and the rights
+of David--David, the man who, he was convinced, had captured her
+imagination.  Hurt vanity played a disproportionate part in this crisis.
+
+The effect on him had been different from what Hylda had anticipated.
+She had pictured him stricken and dumfounded by the blow.  It had never
+occurred to her, it did not now, that he had known the truth; for,
+of course, to know the truth was to speak, to restore to David his own,
+to step down into the second and unconsidered place.  After all, to her
+mind, there was no disgrace.  The late Earl had married secretly, but he
+had been duly married, and he did not marry again until Mercy Claridge
+was dead.  The only wrong was to David, whose grandfather had been even
+more to blame than his own father.  She had looked to help Eglington in
+this moment, and now there seemed nothing for her to do.  He was superior
+to the situation, though it was apparent in his pale face and rigid
+manner that he had been struck hard.
+
+She came near to him, but there was no encouragement to her to play that
+part which is a woman's deepest right and joy and pain in one--to comfort
+her man in trouble, sorrow, or evil.  Always, always, he stood alone,
+whatever the moment might be, leaving her nothing to do--" playing his
+own game with his own weapons," as he had once put it.  Yet there was
+strength in it too, and this came to her mind now, as though in excuse
+for whatever else there was in the situation which, against her will,
+repelled her.
+
+"I am so sorry for you," she said at last.
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked.
+
+"To lose all that has been yours so long."
+
+This was their great moment.  The response to this must be the touchstone
+of their lives.  A--half dozen words might alter all the future, might be
+the watch word to the end of all things.  Involuntarily her heart
+fashioned the response he ought to give--"I shall have you left, Hylda."
+
+The air seemed to grow oppressive, and the instant's silence a torture,
+and, when he spoke, his words struck a chill to her heart--rough notes of
+pain.  "I have not lost yet," were his words.
+
+She shrank.  "You will not hide it.  You will do right by--by him," she
+said with difficulty.
+
+"Let him establish his claim to the last item of fact," he said with
+savage hate.
+
+"Luke Claridge knew.  The proofs are but just across the way, no doubt,"
+she answered, almost coldly, so had his words congealed her heart.
+
+Their great moment had passed.  It was as though a cord had snapped that
+held her to him, and in the recoil she had been thrown far off from him.
+Swift as his mind worked, it had not seen his opportunity to win her to
+his cause, to asphyxiate her high senses, her quixotic justice, by that
+old flood of eloquence and compelling persuasion of the emotions with
+which he had swept her to the altar--an altar of sacrifice.  He had not
+even done what he had left London to do--make sure of her, by an alluring
+flattery and devotion, no difficult duty with one so beautiful and
+desirable; though neither love of beauty nor great desire was strong
+enough in him to divert him from his course for an hour, save by his own
+initiative.  His mother's letter had changed it all.  A few hours before
+he had had a struggle with Soolsby, and now another struggle on the same
+theme was here.  Fate had dealt illy with him, who had ever been its
+spoiled child and favourite.  He had not learned yet the arts of defence
+against adversity.
+
+"Luke Claridge is dead," he answered sharply.  "But you will tell--him,
+you will write to Egypt and tell your brother?" she said, the conviction
+slowly coming to her that he would not.
+
+"It is not my duty to displace myself, to furnish evidence against
+myself--"
+
+"You have destroyed the evidence," she intervened, a little scornfully.
+
+"If there were no more than that--" He shrugged his shoulders
+impatiently.
+
+"Do you know there is more?" she asked searchingly.  "In whose interests
+are you speaking?" he rejoined, with a sneer.  A sudden fury possessed
+him.  Claridge Pasha--she was thinking of him!
+
+"In yours--your conscience, your honour."
+
+"There is over thirty years' possession on my side," he rejoined.
+
+"It is not as if it were going from your family," she argued.
+
+"Family--what is he to me!"
+
+"What is any one to you?" she returned bitterly.
+
+"I am not going to unravel a mystery in order to facilitate the cutting
+of my own throat."
+
+"It might be worth while to do something once for another's sake than
+your own--it would break the monotony," she retorted, all her sense
+tortured by his words, and even more so by his manner.
+
+Long ago Faith had said in Soolsby's but that he "blandished" all with
+whom he came in contact; but Hylda realised with a lacerated heart that
+he had ceased to blandish her.  Possession had altered that.  Yet how had
+he vowed to her in those sweet tempestuous days of his courtship when the
+wind of his passion blew so hard!  Had one of the vows been kept?
+
+Even as she looked at him now, words she had read some days before
+flashed through her mind--they had burnt themselves into her brain:
+
+                   "Broken faith is the crown of evils,
+                    Broken vows are the knotted thongs
+                    Set in the hands of laughing devils,
+                    To scourge us for deep wrongs.
+
+                   "Broken hearts, when all is ended,
+                    Bear the better all after-stings;
+                    Bruised once, the citadel mended,
+                    Standeth through all things."
+
+Suddenly he turned upon her with aggrieved petulance.  "Why are you so
+eager for proof?"
+
+"Oh, I have," she said, with a sudden flood of tears in her voice, though
+her eyes were dry--"I have the feeling your mother had, that nothing will
+be well until you undo the wrong your father did.  I know it was not your
+fault.  I feel for you--oh, believe me, I feel as I have never felt,
+could never feel, for myself.  It was brought on you by your father,
+but you must be the more innocent because he was so guilty.  You have had
+much out of it, it has helped you on your way.  It does not mean so much
+now.  By-and-by another--an English-peerage may be yours by your own
+achievement.  Let it go.  There is so much left, Harry.  It is a small
+thing in a world of work.  It means nothing to me."  Once again, even
+when she had given up all hope, seeing what was the bent of his mind--
+once again she made essay to win him out of his selfishness.  If he would
+only say, "I have you left," how she would strive to shut all else out of
+her life!
+
+He was exasperated.  His usual prescience and prudence forsook him.  It
+angered him that she should press him to an act of sacrifice for the man
+who had so great an influence upon her.  Perversity possessed him.
+Lifelong egotism was too strong for wisdom, or discretion.
+
+Suddenly he caught her hands in both of his and said hoarsely: "Do you
+love me--answer me, do you love me with all your heart and soul?  The
+truth now, as though it were your last word on earth."
+
+Always self.  She had asked, if not in so many words, for a little love,
+something for herself to feed on in the darkening days for him, for her,
+for both; and he was thinking only of himself.
+
+She shrank, but her hands lay passive in his.  "No, not with all my heart
+and soul--but, oh--!"
+
+He flung her hands from him.  "No, not with all your heart and soul--
+I know!  You are willing to sacrifice me for him, and you think I do not
+understand."
+
+She drew herself up, with burning cheeks and flashing eyes.  "You
+understand nothing--nothing.  If you had ever understood me, or any human
+being, or any human heart, you would not have ruined all that might have
+given you an undying love, something that would have followed you through
+fire and flood to the grave.  You cannot love.  You do not understand
+love.  Self--self, always self.  Oh, you are mad, mad, to have thrown it
+all away, all that might have given happiness!  All that I have, all that
+I am, has been at your service; everything has been bent and tuned to
+your pleasure, for your good.  All has been done for you, with thought
+of you and your position and your advancement, and now--now, when you
+have killed all that might have been yours, you cry out in anger that it
+is dying, and you insinuate what you should kill another for insinuating.
+Oh, the wicked, cruel folly of it all!  You suggest--you dare!  I never
+heard a word from David Claridge that might not be written on the
+hoardings.  His honour is deeper than that which might attach to the
+title of Earl of Eglington."
+
+She seemed to tower above him.  For an instant she looked him in the eyes
+with frigid dignity, but a great scorn in her face.  Then she went to the
+door--he hastened to open it for her.
+
+"You will be very sorry for this," he said stubbornly.  He was too
+dumfounded to be discreet, too suddenly embarrassed by the turn affairs
+had taken.  He realised too late that he had made a mistake, that he had
+lost his hold upon her.
+
+As she passed through, there suddenly flashed before her mind the scene
+in the laboratory with the chairmaker.  She felt the meaning of it now.
+
+"You do not intend to tell him--perhaps Soolsby has done so," she said
+keenly, and moved on to the staircase.
+
+He was thunderstruck at her intuition.  "Why do you want to rob
+yourself?" he asked after her vaguely.  She turned back.  "Think of your
+mother's letter that you destroyed," she rejoined solemnly and quietly.
+"Was it right?"
+
+He shut the door, and threw himself into a chair.  "I will put it
+straight with her to-morrow," he said helplessly.
+
+He sat for a half-hour silent, planning his course.
+
+At last there came a tap at the door, and the butler appeared.
+
+"Some one from the Foreign Office, my lord," he said.  A moment
+afterwards a young official, his subordinate, entered.  "There's the
+deuce to pay in Egypt, sir; I've brought the despatch," he said.
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A cloak of words to cover up the real thought behind
+Antipathy of the lesser to the greater nature
+Antipathy of the man in the wrong to the man in the right
+Friendship means a giving and a getting
+He's a barber-shop philosopher
+Monotonously intelligent
+No virtue in not falling, when you're not tempted
+Of course I've hated, or I wouldn't be worth a button
+Only the supremely wise or the deeply ignorant who never alter
+Passion to forget themselves
+Political virtue goes unrewarded
+She knew what to say and what to leave unsaid
+Smiling was part of his equipment
+Sometimes the longest way round is the shortest way home
+Soul tortured through different degrees of misunderstanding
+The vague pain of suffered indifference
+There's no credit in not doing what you don't want to do
+Tricks played by Fact to discredit the imagination
+We must live our dark hours alone
+Woman's deepest right and joy and pain in one--to comfort
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WEAVERS
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+
+XXVIII.   NAHOUM TURNS THE SCREW
+XXIX.     THE RECOIL
+XXX.      LACEY MOVES
+XXXI.     THE STRUGGLE IN THE DESERT
+XXXII.    FORTY STRIPES SAVE ONE
+XXXIII.   THE DARK INDENTURE
+XXXIV.    NAHOUM DROPS THE MASK
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+NAHOUM TURNS THE SCREW
+
+Laughing to himself, Higli Pasha sat with the stem of a narghileh in his
+mouth.  His big shoulders kept time to the quivering of his fat stomach.
+He was sitting in a small court-yard of Nahoum Pasha's palace, waiting
+for its owner to appear.  Meanwhile he exercised a hilarious patience.
+The years had changed him little since he had been sent on that
+expedition against the southern tribes which followed hard on David's
+appointment to office.  As David had expected, few of the traitorous
+officers returned.  Diaz had ignominiously died of the bite of a
+tarantula before a blow had been struck, but Higli had gratefully
+received a slight wound in the first encounter, which enabled him to beat
+a safe retreat to Cairo.  He alone of the chief of the old conspirators
+was left.  Achmet was still at the Place of Lepers, and the old nest of
+traitors was scattered for ever.
+
+Only Nahoum and Higli were left, and between these two there had never
+been partnership or understanding.  Nahoum was not the man to trust to
+confederates, and Higli Pasha was too contemptible a coadjutor.  Nahoum
+had faith in no one save Mizraim the Chief Eunuch, but Mizraim alone was
+better than a thousand; and he was secret--and terrible.  Yet Higli had a
+conviction that Nahoum's alliance with David was a sham, and that David
+would pay the price of misplaced confidence one day.  More than once when
+David's plans had had a set-back, Higli had contrived a meeting with
+Nahoum, to judge for himself the true position.
+
+For his visit to-day he had invented a reason--a matter of finance; but
+his real reason was concealed behind the malevolent merriment by which he
+was now seized.  So absorbed was he that he did not heed the approach of
+another visitor down an angle of the court-yard.  He was roused by a
+voice.
+
+"Well, what's tickling you so, pasha?"
+
+The voice was drawling, and quite gentle; but at the sound of it, Higli's
+laugh stopped short, and the muscles of his face contracted.  If there
+was one man of whom he had a wholesome fear--why, he could not tell--it
+was this round-faced, abrupt, imperturbable American, Claridge Pasha's
+right-hand man.  Legends of resourcefulness and bravery had gathered
+round his name.  "Who's been stroking your chin with a feather, pasha?"
+he continued, his eye piercing the other like a gimlet.
+
+"It was an amusing tale I heard at Assiout, effendi," was Higli's abashed
+and surly reply.
+
+"Oh, at Assiout!" rejoined Lacey.  "Yes, they tell funny stories at
+Assiout.  And when were you at Assiout, pasha?"
+
+"Two days ago, effendi."
+
+"And so you thought you'd tell the funny little story to Nahoum as quick
+as could be, eh?  He likes funny stories, same as you--damn, nice, funny
+little stories, eh?"
+
+There was something chilly in Lacey's voice now, which Higli did not
+like; something much too menacing and contemptuous for a mere man-of-all-
+work to the Inglesi.  Higli bridled up, his eyes glared sulkily.
+
+"It is but my own business if I laugh or if I curse, effendi," he
+replied, his hand shaking a little on the stem of the narghileh.
+
+"Precisely, my diaphanous polyandrist; but it isn't quite your own affair
+what you laugh at--not if I know it!"
+
+"Does the effendi think I was laughing at him?"
+
+"The effendi thinks not.  The effendi knows that the descendant of a
+hundred tigers was laughing at the funny little story, of how the two
+cotton-mills that Claridge Pasha built were burned down all in one night,
+and one of his steamers sent down the cataract at Assouan.  A knock-down
+blow for Claridge Pasha, eh?  That's all you thought of, wasn't it?  And
+it doesn't matter to you that the cotton-mills made thousands better off,
+and started new industries in Egypt.  No, it only matters to you that
+Claridge Pasha loses half his fortune, and that you think his feet are
+in the quicksands, and 'll be sucked in, to make an Egyptian holiday.
+Anything to discredit him here, eh?  I'm not sure what else you know; but
+I'll find out, my noble pasha, and if you've had your hand in it--but no,
+you ain't game-cock enough for that!  But if you were, if you had a hand
+in the making of your funny little story, there's a nutcracker that 'd
+break the shell of that joke--"
+
+He turned round quickly, seeing a shadow and hearing a movement.  Nahoum
+was but a few feet away.  There was a bland smile on his face, a look of
+innocence in his magnificent blue eye.  As he met Lacey's look, the smile
+left his lips, a grave sympathy appeared to possess them, and he spoke
+softly:
+
+"I know the thing that burns thy heart, effendi, to whom be the flowers
+of hope and the fruits of merit.  It is even so, a great blow has fallen.
+Two hours since I heard.  I went at once to see Claridge Pasha, but found
+him not.  Does he know, think you?" he added sadly.
+
+"May your heart never be harder than it is, pasha, and when I left the
+Saadat an hour ago, he did not know.  His messenger hadn't a steamer like
+Higli Pasha there.  But he was coming to see you; and that's why I'm
+here.  I've been brushing the flies off this sore on the hump of Egypt
+while waiting."  He glanced with disdain at Higli.
+
+A smile rose like liquid in the eye of Nahoum and subsided, then he
+turned to Higli inquiringly.
+
+"I have come on business, Excellency; the railway to Rosetta, and--"
+
+"To-morrow--or the next day," responded Nahoum irritably, and turned
+again to Lacey.
+
+As Higli's huge frame disappeared through a gateway, Nahoum motioned
+Lacey to a divan, and summoned a slave for cooling drinks.  Lacey's eyes
+now watched him with an innocence nearly as childlike as his own.  Lacey
+well knew that here was a foe worthy of the best steel.  That he was a
+foe, and a malignant foe, he had no doubt whatever; he had settled the
+point in his mind long ago; and two letters he had received from Lady
+Eglington, in which she had said in so many words, "Watch Nahoum!" had
+made him vigilant and intuitive.  He knew, meanwhile, that he was
+following the trail of a master-hunter who covered up his tracks.  Lacey
+was as certain as though he had the book of Nahoum's mind open in his
+hand, that David's work had been torn down again--and this time with dire
+effect--by this Armenian, whom David trusted like a brother.  But the
+black doors that closed on the truth on every side only made him more
+determined to unlock them; and, when he faltered as to his own powers,
+he trusted Mahommed Hassan, whose devotion to David had given him eyes
+that pierced dark places.
+
+"Surely the God of Israel has smitten Claridge Pasha sorely.  My heart
+will mourn to look upon his face.  The day is insulting in its
+brightness," continued Nahoum with a sigh, his eyes bent upon Lacey,
+dejection in his shoulders.
+
+Lacey started.  "The God of Israel!"  How blasphemous it sounded from the
+lips of Nahoum, Oriental of Orientals, Christian though he was also!
+
+"I think, perhaps, you'll get over it, pasha.  Man is born to trouble,
+and you've got a lot of courage.  I guess you could see other people bear
+a pile of suffering, and never flinch."
+
+Nahoum appeared not to notice the gibe.  "It is a land of suffering,
+effendi," he sighed, "and one sees what one sees."
+
+"Have you any idea, any real sensible idea, how those cotton-mills got
+afire?"  Lacey's eyes were fixed on Nahoum's face.
+
+The other met his gaze calmly.  "Who can tell!  An accident, perhaps,
+or--"
+
+"Or some one set the mills on fire in several places at once--they say
+the buildings flamed out in every corner; and it was the only time in a
+month they hadn't been running night and day.  Funny, isn't it?"
+
+"It looks like the work of an enemy, effendi."  Nahoum shook his head
+gravely.  "A fortune destroyed in an hour, as it were.  But we shall get
+the dog.  We shall find him.  There is no hole deep enough to hide him
+from us."
+
+"Well, I wouldn't go looking in holes for him, pasha.
+
+"He isn't any cave-dweller, that incendiary; he's an artist--no palace is
+too unlikely for him.  No, I wouldn't go poking in mud-huts to find him."
+
+"Thou dost not think that Higli Pasha--" Nahoum seemed startled out of
+equanimity by the thought.  Lacey eyed him meditatively, and said
+reflectively: "Say, you're an artist, pasha.  You are a guesser of the
+first rank.  But I'd guess again.  Higli Pasha would have done it, if it
+had ever occurred to him; and he'd had the pluck.  But it didn't, and he
+hadn't.  What I can't understand is that the artist that did it should
+have done it before Claridge Pasha left for the Soudan.  Here we were
+just about to start; and if we'd got away south, the job would have done
+more harm, and the Saadat would have been out of the way.  No, I can't
+understand why the firebug didn't let us get clean away; for if the
+Saadat stays here, he'll be where he can stop the underground mining."
+
+Nahoum's self-control did not desert him, though he fully realised that
+this man suspected him.  On the surface Lacey was right.  It would have
+seemed better to let David go, and destroy his work afterwards, but he
+had been moved by other considerations, and his design was deep.  His
+own emissaries were in the Soudan, announcing David's determination to
+abolish slavery, secretly stirring up feeling against him, preparing for
+the final blow to be delivered, when he went again among the southern
+tribes.  He had waited and waited, and now the time was come.  Had he,
+Nahoum, not agreed with David that the time had come for the slave-trade
+to go?  Had he not encouraged him to take this bold step, in the sure
+belief that it would overwhelm him, and bring him an ignominious death,
+embittered by total failure of all he had tried to do?
+
+For years he had secretly loosened the foundations of David's work, and
+the triumph of Oriental duplicity over Western civilisation and integrity
+was sweet in his mouth.  And now there was reason to believe that, at
+last, Kaid was turning against the Inglesi.  Everything would come at
+once.  If all that he had planned was successful, even this man before
+him should aid in his master's destruction.
+
+"If it was all done by an enemy," he said, in answer to Lacey, at last,
+"would it all be reasoned out like that?  Is hatred so logical?  Dost
+thou think Claridge Pasha will not go now?  The troops are ready at Wady-
+Halfa, everything is in order; the last load of equipment has gone.  Will
+not Claridge Pasha find the money somehow?  I will do what I can.  My
+heart is moved to aid him."
+
+"Yes, you'd do what you could, pasha," Lacey rejoined enigmatically, "but
+whether it would set the Saadat on his expedition or not is a question.
+But I guess, after all, he's got to go.  He willed it so.  People may try
+to stop him, and they may tear down what he does, but he does at last
+what he starts to do, and no one can prevent him--not any one.  Yes, he's
+going on this expedition; and he'll have the money, too."  There was a
+strange, abstracted look in his face, as though he saw something which
+held him fascinated.
+
+Presently, as if with an effort, he rose to his feet, took the red fez
+from his head, and fanned himself with it for a moment.  "Don't you
+forget it, pasha; the Saadat will win.  He can't be beaten, not in a
+thousand years.  Here he comes."
+
+Nahoum got to his feet, as David came quickly through the small gateway
+of the court-yard, his head erect, his lips smiling, his eyes sweeping
+the place.  He came forward briskly to them.  It was plain he had not
+heard the evil news.
+
+"Peace be to thee, Saadat, and may thy life be fenced about with safety!"
+said Nahoum.
+
+David laid a hand on Lacey's arm and squeezed it, smiling at him with
+such friendship that Lacey's eyes moistened, and he turned his head away.
+
+There was a quiet elation in David's look.  "We are ready at last," he
+said, looking from one to the other.  "Well, well," he added, almost
+boyishly, "has thee nothing to say, Nahoum?"
+
+Nahoum turned his head away as though overcome.  David's face grew
+instantly grave.  He turned to Lacey.  Never before had he seen Lacey's
+face with a look like this.  He grasped Lacey's arm.  "What is it?" he
+asked quietly.  "What does thee want to say to me?"
+
+But Lacey could not speak, and David turned again to Nahoum.  "What is
+there to say to me?" he asked.  "Something has happened--what is it?
+.  .  .  Come, many things have happened before.  This can be no worse.
+Do thee speak," he urged gently.
+
+"Saadat," said Nahoum, as though under the stress of feeling, "the
+cotton-mills at Tashah and Mini are gone--burned to the ground."
+
+For a moment David looked at him without sight in his eyes, and his face
+grew very pale.  "Excellency, all in one night, the besom of destruction
+was abroad," he heard Nahoum say, as though from great depths below him.
+He slowly turned his head to look at Lacey.  "Is this true?" he asked at
+last in an unsteady voice.  Lacey could not speak, but inclined his head.
+
+David's figure seemed to shrink for a moment, his face had a withered
+look, and his head fell forward in a mood of terrible dejection.
+
+"Saadat!  Oh, my God, Saadat, don't take it so!" said Lacey brokenly,
+and stepped between David and Nahoum.  He could not bear that the
+stricken face and figure should be seen by Nahoum, whom he believed to be
+secretly gloating.  "Saadat," he said brokenly, "God has always been with
+you; He hasn't forgotten you now.
+
+"The work of years," David murmured, and seemed not to hear.
+
+"When God permits, shall man despair?" interposed Nahoum, in a voice
+that lingered on the words.  Nahoum accomplished what Lacey had failed to
+do.  His voice had pierced to some remote corner in David's nature, and
+roused him.  Was it that doubt, suspicion, had been wakened at last?  Was
+some sensitive nerve touched, that this Oriental should offer Christian
+comfort to him in his need--to him who had seen the greater light?  Or
+was it that some unreality in the words struck a note which excited a new
+and subconscious understanding?  Perhaps it was a little of all three.
+He did not stop to inquire.  In crises such as that through which he was
+passing, the mind and body act without reason, rather by the primal
+instinct, the certain call of the things that were before reason was.
+
+"God is with the patient," continued Nahoum; and Lacey set his teeth to
+bear this insult to all things.  But Nahoum accomplished what he had not
+anticipated.  David straightened himself up, and clasped his hands behind
+him.  By a supreme effort of the will he controlled himself, and the
+colour came back faintly to his face.  "God's will be done," he said,
+and looked Nahoum calmly in the eyes.  "It was no accident," he added
+with conviction.  "It was an enemy of Egypt."  Suddenly the thing rushed
+over him again, going through his veins like a poisonous ether, and
+clamping his heart as with iron.  "All to do over again!" he said
+brokenly, and again he caught Lacey's arm.
+
+With an uncontrollable impulse Lacey took David's hand in his own warm,
+human grasp.
+
+"Once I thought I lost everything in Mexico, Saadat, and I understand
+what you feel.  But all wasn't lost in Mexico, as I found at last, and I
+got something, too, that I didn't put in.  Say, let us go from here.  God
+is backing you, Saadat.  Isn't it all right--same as ever?"
+
+David was himself again.  "Thee is a good man," he said, and through the
+sadness of his eyes there stole a smile.  "Let us go," he said.  Then he
+added in a businesslike way: "To-morrow at seven, Nahoum.  There is much
+to do."
+
+He turned towards the gate with Lacey, where the horses waited.  Mahommed
+Hassan met them as they prepared to mount.  He handed David a letter.
+It was from Faith, and contained the news of Luke Claridge's death.
+Everything had come at once.  He stumbled into the saddle with a moan.
+
+"At last I have drawn blood," said Nahoum to himself with grim
+satisfaction, as they disappeared.  "It is the beginning of the end.
+It will crush him-I saw it in his eyes.  God of Israel, I shall rule
+again in Egypt!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE RECOIL
+
+It was a great day in the Muslim year.  The Mahmal, or Sacred Carpet,
+was leaving Cairo on its long pilgrimage of thirty-seven days to Mecca
+and Mahomet's tomb.  Great guns boomed from the Citadel, as the gorgeous
+procession, forming itself beneath the Mokattam Hills, began its slow
+march to where, seated in the shade of an ornate pavilion, Prince Kaid
+awaited its approach to pay devout homage.  Thousands looked down at the
+scene from the ramparts of the Citadel, from the overhanging cliffs, and
+from the tops of the houses that hung on the ledges of rock rising
+abruptly from the level ground, to which the last of the famed Mamelukes
+leaped to their destruction.
+
+Now to Prince Kaid's ears there came from hundreds of hoarse throats the
+cry: "Allah!  Allah!  May thy journey be with safety to Arafat!"
+mingling with the harsh music of the fifes and drums.
+
+Kaid looked upon the scene with drawn face and lowering brows.  His
+retinue watched him with alarm.  A whisper had passed that, two nights
+before, the Effendina had sent in haste for a famous Italian physician
+lately come to Cairo, and that since his visit Kaid had been sullen and
+depressed.  It was also the gossip of the bazaars that he had suddenly
+shown favour to those of the Royal House and to other reactionaries,
+who had been enemies to the influence of Claridge Pasha.
+
+This rumour had been followed by an official proclamation that no
+Europeans or Christians would be admitted to the ceremony of the Sacred
+Carpet.
+
+Thus it was that Kaid looked out on a vast multitude of Muslims, in which
+not one European face showed, and from lip to lip there passed the word,
+"Harrik--Harrik--remember Harrik!  Kaid turns from the infidel!"
+
+They crowded near the great pavilion--as near as the mounted Nubians
+would permit--to see Kaid's face; while he, with eyes wandering over the
+vast assemblage, was lost in dark reflections.  For a year he had
+struggled against a growing conviction that some obscure disease was
+sapping his strength.  He had hid it from every one, until, at last,
+distress and pain had overcome him.  The verdict of the Italian expert
+was that possible, but by no means certain, cure might come from an
+operation which must be delayed for a month or more.
+
+Suddenly, the world had grown unfamiliar to him; he saw it from afar; but
+his subconscious self involuntarily registered impressions, and he moved
+mechanically through the ceremonies and duties of the immediate present.
+Thrown back upon himself, to fight his own fight, with the instinct of
+primary life his mind involuntarily drew for refuge to the habits and
+predispositions of youth; and for two days he had shut himself away from
+the activities with which David and Nahoum were associated.  Being deeply
+engaged with the details of the expedition to the Soudan, David had not
+gone to the Palace; and he was unaware of the turn which things had
+taken.
+
+Three times, with slow and stately steps, the procession wound in a
+circle in the great square, before it approached the pavilion where the
+Effendina sat, the splendid camels carrying the embroidered tent wherein
+the Carpet rested, and that which bore the Emir of the pilgrims, moving
+gracefully like ships at sea.  Naked swordsmen, with upright and shining
+blades, were followed by men on camels bearing kettle-drums.  After them
+came Arab riders with fresh green branches fastened to the saddles like
+plumes, while others carried flags and banners emblazoned with texts and
+symbols.  Troops of horsemen in white woollen cloaks, sheikhs and
+Bedouins with flowing robes and huge turbans, religious chiefs of the
+great sects, imperturbable and statuesque, were in strange contrast to
+the shouting dervishes and camel-drivers and eager pilgrims.
+
+At last the great camel with its sacred burden stopped in front of Kaid
+for his prayer and blessing.  As he held the tassels, lifted the gold-
+fringed curtain, and invoked Allah's blessing, a half-naked sheikh ran
+forward, and, raising his hand high above his head, cried shrilly:
+"Kaid, Kaid, hearken!"
+
+Rough hands caught him away, but Kaid commanded them to desist; and the
+man called a blessing on him; and cried aloud:
+
+"Listen, O Kaid, son of the stars and the light of day.  God hath exalted
+thee.  Thou art the Egyptian of all the Egyptians.  In thy hand is power.
+But thou art mortal even as I.  Behold, O Kaid, in the hour that I was
+born thou wast born, I in the dust without thy Palace wall, thou amid the
+splendid things.  But thy star is my star.  Behold, as God ordains, the
+Tree of Life was shaken on the night when all men pray and cry aloud to
+God--even the Night of the Falling Leaves.  And I watched the falling
+leaves; and I saw my leaf, and it was withered, but only a little
+withered, and so I live yet a little.  But I looked for thy leaf, thou
+who wert born in that moment when I waked to the world.  I looked long,
+but I found no leaf, neither green nor withered.  But I looked again upon
+my leaf, and then I saw that thy name now was also upon my leaf, and that
+it was neither green nor withered; but was a leaf that drooped as when an
+evil wind has passed and drunk its life.  Listen, O Kaid!  Upon the tomb
+of Mahomet I will set my lips, and it may be that the leaf of my life
+will come fresh and green again.  But thou--wilt thou not come also to
+the lord Mahomet's tomb?  Or"--he paused and raised his voice--"or wilt
+thou stay and lay thy lips upon the cross of the infidel?  Wilt thou--"
+
+He could say no more, for Kaid's face now darkened with anger.  He made a
+gesture, and, in an instant, the man was gagged and bound, while a sullen
+silence fell upon the crowd.  Kaid suddenly became aware of this change
+of feeling, and looked round him.  Presently his old prudence and
+subtlety came back, his face cleared a little, and he called aloud,
+"Unloose the man, and let him come to me."  An instant after, the man
+was on his knees, silent before him.
+
+"What is thy name?" Kaid asked.
+
+"Kaid Ibrahim, Effendina," was the reply.
+
+"Thou hast misinterpreted thy dream, Kaid Ibrahim," answered the
+Effendina.  "The drooping leaf was token of the danger in which thy life
+should be, and my name upon thy leaf was token that I should save thee
+from death.  Behold, I save thee.  Inshallah, go in peace!  There is no
+God but God, and the Cross is the sign of a false prophet.  Thou art mad.
+God give thee a new mind.  Go."
+
+The man was presently lost in the sweltering, half-frenzied crowd; but he
+had done his work, and his words rang in the ears of Kaid as he rode
+away.
+
+A few hours afterwards, bitter and rebellious, murmuring to himself, Kaid
+sat in a darkened room of his Nile Palace beyond the city.  So few years
+on the throne, so young, so much on which to lay the hand of pleasure, so
+many millions to command; and yet the slave at his door had a surer hold
+on life and all its joys and lures than he, Prince Kaid, ruler of Egypt!
+There was on him that barbaric despair which has taken dreadful toll of
+life for the decree of destiny.  Across the record of this day, as across
+the history of many an Eastern and pagan tyrant, was written: "He would
+not die alone."  That the world should go on when he was gone, that men
+should buy and sell and laugh and drink, and flaunt it in the sun, while
+he, Prince Kaid, would be done with it all.
+
+He was roused by the rustling of a robe.  Before him stood the Arab
+physician, Sharif Bey, who had been in his father's house and his own
+for a lifetime.  It was many a year since his ministrations to Kaid had
+ceased; but he had remained on in the Palace, doing service to those who
+received him, and--it was said by the evil-tongued--granting certificates
+of death out of harmony with dark facts, a sinister and useful figure.
+His beard was white, his face was friendly, almost benevolent, but his
+eyes had a light caught from no celestial flame.
+
+His look was confident now, as his eyes bent on Kaid.  He had lived long,
+he had seen much, he had heard of the peril that had been foreshadowed by
+the infidel physician; and, by a sure instinct, he knew that his own
+opportunity had come.  He knew that Kaid would snatch at any offered
+comfort, would cherish any alleviating lie, would steal back from
+science and civilisation and the modern palace to the superstition of the
+fellah's hut.  Were not all men alike when the neboot of Fate struck them
+down into the terrible loneliness of doom, numbing their minds?  Luck
+would be with him that offered first succour in that dark hour.  Sharif
+had come at the right moment for Sharif.
+
+Kaid looked at him with dull yet anxious eyes.  "Did I not command that
+none should enter?" he asked presently in a thick voice.
+
+"Am I not thy physician, Effendina, to whom be the undying years?  When
+the Effendina is sick, shall I not heal?  Have I not waited like a dog at
+thy door these many years, till that time would come when none could heal
+thee save Sharif?"
+
+"What canst thou give me?"
+
+"What the infidel physician gave thee not--I can give thee hope.  Hast
+thou done well, oh, Effendina, to turn from thine own people?  Did not
+thine own father, and did not Mehemet Ali, live to a good age?  Who were
+their physicians?  My father and I, and my father's father, and his
+father's father."
+
+"Thou canst cure me altogether?" asked Kaid hesitatingly.
+
+"Wilt thou not have faith in one of thine own race?  Will the infidel
+love thee as do we, who are thy children and thy brothers, who are to
+thee as a nail driven in the wall, not to be moved?  Thou shalt live--
+Inshallah, thou shalt have healing and length of days!"
+
+He paused at a gesture from Kaid, for a slave had entered and stood
+waiting.
+
+"What dost thou here?  Wert thou not commanded?" asked Kaid.
+
+"Effendina, Claridge Pasha is waiting," was the reply.
+
+Kaid frowned, hesitated; then, with a sudden resolve, made a gesture of
+dismissal to Sharif Bey, and nodded David's admittance to the slave.
+
+As David entered, he passed Sharif Bey, and something in the look on
+the Arab physician's face--a secret malignancy and triumph--struck him
+strangely.  And now a fresh anxiety and apprehension rose in his mind as
+he glanced at Kaid.  The eye was heavy and gloomy, the face was clouded,
+the lips once so ready to smile at him were sullen and smileless now.
+David stood still, waiting.
+
+"I did not expect thee till to-morrow, Saadat," said Kaid moodily at
+last.
+
+"The business is urgent?"  "Effendina," said David, with every nerve at
+tension, yet with outward self-control, "I have to report--" He paused,
+agitated; then, in a firm voice, he told of the disaster which had
+befallen the cotton-mills and the steamer.
+
+As David spoke, Kaid's face grew darker, his fingers fumbled vaguely with
+the linen of the loose white robe he wore.  When the tale was finished he
+sat for a moment apparently stunned by the news, then he burst out
+fiercely:
+
+"Bismillah, am I to hear only black words to-day?  Hast thou naught to
+say but this--the fortune of Egypt burned to ashes!"
+
+David held back the quick retort that came to his tongue.
+
+"Half my fortune is in the ashes," he answered with dignity.  "The rest
+came from savings never made before by this Government.  Is the work less
+worthy in thy sight, Effendina, because it has been destroyed?  Would thy
+life be less great and useful because a blow took thee from behind?"
+
+Kaid's face turned black.  David had bruised an open wound.
+
+"What is my life to thee--what is thy work to me?"
+
+"Thy life is dear to Egypt, Effendina," urged David soothingly, "and my
+labour for Egypt has been pleasant in thine eyes till now."
+
+"Egypt cannot be saved against her will," was the moody response.  "What
+has come of the Western hand upon the Eastern plough?"  His face grew
+blacker; his heart was feeding on itself.
+
+"Thou, the friend of Egypt, hast come of it, Effendina."
+
+"Harrik was right, Harrik was right," Kaid answered, with stubborn gloom
+and anger.  "Better to die in our own way, if we must die, than live in
+the way of another.  Thou wouldst make of Egypt another England; thou
+wouldst civilise the Soudan--bismillah, it is folly!"
+
+"That is not the way Mehemet Ali thought, nor Ibrahim.  Nor dost thou
+think so, Effendina," David answered gravely.  "A dark spirit is on thee.
+Wouldst thou have me understand that what we have done together, thou and
+I, was ill done, that the old bad days were better?"
+
+"Go back to thine own land," was the surly answer.  "Nation after nation
+ravaged Egypt, sowed their legions here, but the Egyptian has lived them
+down.  The faces of the fellaheen are the faces of Thotmes and Seti.  Go
+back.  Egypt will travel her own path.  We are of the East; we are
+Muslim.  What is right to you is wrong to us.  Ye would make us over--
+give us cotton beds and wooden floors and fine flour of the mill, and
+cleanse the cholera-hut with disinfectants, but are these things all?
+How many of your civilised millions would die for their prophet Christ?
+Yet all Egypt would rise up from the mud-floor, the dourha-field and the
+mud-hut, and would come out to die for Mahomet and Allah--ay, as Harrik
+knew, as Harrik knew!  Ye steal into corners, and hide behind the
+curtains of your beds to pray; we pray where the hour of prayer finds us
+--in the street, in the market-place, where the house is building, the
+horse being shod, or the money-changers are.  Ye hear the call of
+civilisation, but we heap the Muezzin--"
+
+He stopped, and searched mechanically for his watch.  "It is the hour the
+Muezzin calls," said David gently.  "It is almost sunset.  Shall I open
+the windows that the call may come to us?" he added.
+
+While Kaid stared at him, his breast heaving with passion, David went to
+a window and opened the shutters wide.
+
+The Palace faced the Nile, which showed like a tortuous band of blue and
+silver a mile or so away.  Nothing lay between but the brown sand, and
+here and there a handful of dark figures gliding towards the river, or a
+little train of camels making for the bare grey hills from the ghiassas
+which had given them their desert loads.  The course of the Nile was
+marked by a wide fringe of palms showing blue and purple, friendly and
+ancient and solitary.  Beyond the river and the palms lay the grey-brown
+desert, faintly touched with red.  So clear was the sweet evening air
+that the irregular surface of the desert showed for a score of miles as
+plainly as though it were but a step away.  Hummocks of sand--tombs and
+fallen monuments gave a feeling as of forgotten and buried peoples; and
+the two vast pyramids of Sakkarah stood up in the plaintive glow of the
+evening skies, majestic and solemn, faithful to the dissolved and
+absorbed races who had built them.  Curtains of mauve and saffron-red
+were hung behind them, and through a break of cloud fringing the horizon
+a yellow glow poured, to touch the tips of the pyramids with poignant
+splendour.  But farther over to the right, where Cairo lay, there hung a
+bluish mist, palpable and delicate, out of which emerged the vast
+pyramids of Cheops; and beside it the smiling inscrutable Sphinx faced
+the changeless centuries.  Beyond the pyramids the mist deepened into a
+vast deep cloud of blue and purple, which seemed the end to some mystic
+highway untravelled by the sons of men.
+
+Suddenly there swept over David a wave of feeling such as had passed over
+Kaid, though of a different nature.  Those who had built the pyramids
+were gone, Cheops and Thotmes and Amenhotep and Chefron and the rest.
+There had been reformers in those lost races; one age had sought to
+better the last, one man had toiled to save--yet there only remained
+offensive bundles of mummied flesh and bone and a handful of relics in
+tombs fifty centuries old.  Was it all, then, futile?  Did it matter,
+then, whether one man laboured or a race aspired?
+
+Only for a moment these thoughts passed through his mind; and then, as
+the glow through the broken cloud on the opposite horizon suddenly faded,
+and veils of melancholy fell over the desert and the river and the palms,
+there rose a call, sweetly shrill, undoubtingly insistent.  Sunset had
+come, and, with it, the Muezzin's call to prayer from the minaret of a
+mosque hard by.
+
+David was conscious of a movement behind him--that Kaid was praying with
+hands uplifted; and out on the sands between the window and the river he
+saw kneeling figures here and there, saw the camel-drivers halt their
+trains, and face the East with hands uplifted.  The call went on--"La
+ilaha illa-llah !"
+
+It called David, too.  The force and searching energy and fire in it
+stole through his veins, and drove from him the sense of futility and
+despondency which had so deeply added to his trouble.  There was
+something for him, too, in that which held infatuated the minds
+of so many millions.
+
+A moment later Kaid and he faced each other again.  "Effendina," he said,
+"thou wilt not desert our work now?"
+
+"Money--for this expedition?  Thou hast it?" Kaid asked ironically.
+
+"I have but little money, and it must go to rebuild the mills, Effendina.
+I must have it of thee."
+
+"Let them remain in their ashes."
+
+"But thousands will have no work."
+
+"They had work before they were built, they will have work now they are
+gone."
+
+"Effendina, I stayed in Egypt at thy request.  The work is thy work.
+Wilt thou desert it?"
+
+"The West lured me--by things that seemed.  Now I know things as they
+are."
+
+"They will lure thee again to-morrow," said David firmly, but with a
+weight on his spirit.  His eyes sought and held Kaid's.  "It is too late
+to go back; we must go forward or we shall lose the Soudan, and a Mahdi
+and his men will be in Cairo in ten years."
+
+For an instant Kaid was startled.  The old look of energy and purpose
+leaped up into his eye; but it faded quickly again.  If, as the Italian
+physician more than hinted, his life hung by a thread, did it matter
+whether the barbarian came to Cairo?  That was the business of those who
+came after.  If Sharif was right, and his life was saved, there would be
+time enough to set things right.
+
+"I will not pour water on the sands to make an ocean," he answered.
+"Will a ship sail on the Sahara?  Bismillah, it is all a dream!  Harrik
+was right.  But dost thou think to do with me as thou didst with Harrik?"
+he sneered.  "Is it in thy mind?"
+
+David's patience broke down under the long provocation.  "Know then,
+Effendina," he said angrily, "that I am not thy subject, nor one beholden
+to thee, nor thy slave.  Upon terms well understood, I have laboured
+here.  I have kept my obligations, and it is thy duty to keep thy
+obligations, though the hand of death were on thee.  I know not what has
+poisoned thy mind, and driven thee from reason and from justice.  I know
+that, Prince Pasha of Egypt as thou art, thou art as bound to me as any
+fellah that agrees to tend my door or row my boat.  Thy compact with me
+is a compact with England, and it shall be kept, if thou art an honest
+man.  Thou mayst find thousands in Egypt who will serve thee at any
+price, and bear thee in any mood.  I have but one price.  It is well
+known to thee.  I will not be the target for thy black temper.  This is
+not the middle ages; I am an Englishman, not a helot.  The bond must be
+kept; thou shalt not play fast and loose.  Money must be found; the
+expedition must go.  But if thy purpose is now Harrik's purpose, then
+Europe should know, and Egypt also should know.  I have been thy right
+hand, Effendina; I will not be thy old shoe, to be cast aside at thy
+will."
+
+In all the days of his life David had never flamed out as he did now.
+Passionate as his words were, his manner was strangely quiet, but his
+white and glistening face and his burning eyes showed how deep was his
+anger.
+
+As he spoke, Kaid sank upon the divan.  Never had he been challenged so.
+With his own people he had ever been used to cringing and abasement, and
+he had played the tyrant, and struck hard and cruelly, and he had been
+feared; but here, behind David's courteous attitude, there was a scathing
+arraignment of his conduct which took no count of consequence.  In other
+circumstances his vanity would have shrunk under this whip of words, but
+his native reason and his quick humour would have justified David.  In
+this black distemper possessing him, however, only outraged egotism
+prevailed.  His hands clenched and unclenched, his lips were drawn back
+on his teeth in rage.
+
+When David had finished, Kaid suddenly got to his feet and took a step
+forward with a malediction, but a faintness seized him and he staggered
+back.  When he raised his head again David was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+LACEY MOVES
+
+If there was one glistening bead of sweat on the bald pate of Lacey of
+Chicago there were a thousand; and the smile on his face was not less
+shining and unlimited.  He burst into the rooms of the palace where David
+had residence, calling: "Oyez!  Oyez!  Saadat!  Oh, Pasha of the Thousand
+Tails!  Oyez!  Oyez!"
+
+Getting no answer, he began to perform a dance round the room, which in
+modern days is known as the negro cake-walk.  It was not dignified, but
+it would have been less dignified still performed by any other living man
+of forty-five with a bald head and a waist-band ten inches too large.
+Round the room three times he went, and then he dropped on a divan.  He
+gasped, and mopped his face and forehead, leaving a little island of
+moisture on the top of his head untouched.  After a moment, he gained
+breath and settled down a little.  Then he burst out:
+
+         "Are you coming to my party, O effendi?
+          There'll be high jinks, there'll be welcome, there'll be room;
+          For to-morrow we are pulling stakes for Shendy.
+          Are you coming to my party, O Nahoum?"
+
+"Say, I guess that's pretty good on the spur of the moment," he wheezed,
+and, taking his inseparable note book from his pocket, wrote the
+impromptu down.  "I guess She'll like that-it rings spontaneous.  She'll
+be tickled, tickled to death, when she knows what's behind it."  He
+repeated it with gusto.  "She'll dote on it," he added--the person to
+whom he referred being the sister of the American Consul, the little
+widow, "cute as she can be," of whom he had written to Hylda in the
+letter which had brought a crisis in her life.  As he returned the note-
+book to his pocket a door opened.  Mahommed Hassan slid forward into the
+room, and stood still, impassive and gloomy.  Lacey beckoned, and said
+grotesquely:
+
+        "'Come hither, come hither, my little daughter,
+          And do not tremble so!'"
+
+A sort of scornful patience was in Mahommed's look, but he came nearer
+and waited.
+
+"Squat on the ground, and smile a smile of mirth, Mahommed," Lacey said
+riotously.  "'For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o'
+the May!'"
+
+Mahommed's face grew resentful.  "O effendi, shall the camel-driver laugh
+when the camels are lost in the khamsin and the water-bottle is empty?"
+
+"Certainly not, O son of the spreading palm; but this is not a desert,
+nor a gaudy caravan.  This is a feast of all angels.  This is the day
+when Nahoum the Nefarious is to be buckled up like a belt, and ridden in
+a ring.  Where is the Saadat?"
+
+"He is gone, effendi!  Like a mist on the face of the running water, so
+was his face; like eyes that did not see, so was his look.  'Peace be to
+thee, Mahommed, thou art faithful as Zaida,' he said, and he mounted and
+rode into the desert.  I ran after till he was come to the edge of the
+desert; but he sent me back, saying that I must wait for thee; and this
+word I was to say, that Prince Kaid had turned his face darkly from him,
+and that the finger of Sharif--"
+
+"That fanatical old quack--Harrik's friend!"
+
+"--that the finger of Sharif was on his pulse; but the end of all was in
+the hands of God."
+
+"Oh yes, exactly, the finger of Sharif on his pulse!  The old story-the
+return to the mother's milk, throwing back to all the Pharaohs.  Well,
+what then?" he added cheerfully, his smile breaking out again.  "Where
+has he gone, our Saadat?"
+
+"To Ebn Ezra Bey at the Coptic Monastery by the Etl Tree, where your
+prophet Christ slept when a child."
+
+Lacey hummed to himself meditatively.  "A sort of last powwow--Rome
+before the fall.  Everything wrong, eh?  Kaid turned fanatic, Nahoum on
+the tiles watching for the Saadat to fall, things trembling for want of
+hard cash.  That's it, isn't it, Mahommed?"
+
+Mahommed nodded, but his look was now alert, and less sombre.  He had
+caught at something vital and confident in Lacey's tone.  He drew nearer,
+and listened closely.
+
+"Well, now, my gentle gazelle, listen unto me," continued Lacey.  He
+suddenly leaned forward, and spoke in subdued but rapid tones.  "Say,
+Mahommed, once upon a time there was an American man, with a shock of red
+hair, and a nature like a spring-lock.  He went down to Mexico, with a
+million or two of his own money got honestly by an undisputed will from
+an undisputed father--you don't understand that, but it doesn't matter--
+and with a few millions of other people's money, for to gamble in mines
+and railways and banks and steamship companies--all to do with Mexico
+what the Saadat has tried to do in Egypt with less money; but not for the
+love of Allah, same as him.  This American was going to conquer like
+Cortez, but his name was Thomas Tilman Lacey, and he had a lot of gall.
+After years of earnest effort, he lost his hair and the millions of the
+Infatuated Conquistadores.  And by-and-by he came to Cairo with a
+thimbleful of income, and began to live again.  There was a civil war
+going on in his own country, but he thought that one out of forty
+millions would not be strictly missed.  So he stayed in Egypt; and the
+tale of his days in Egypt, is it not written with a neboot of domwood in
+the book of Mahommed Hassan the scribe?"
+
+He paused and beamed upon the watchful Mahommed, who, if he did not
+understand all that had been said, was in no difficulty as to the drift
+and meaning of the story.
+
+"Aiwa, effendi," he urged impatiently.  "It is a long ride to the Etl
+Tree, and the day is far spent."
+
+"Inshallah, you shall hear, my turtle-dove!  One day there came to Cairo,
+in great haste, a man from Mexico, looking for the foolish one called T.
+T. Lacey, bearing glad news.  And the man from Mexico blew his trumpet,
+and straightway T. T. Lacey fell down dismayed.  The trumpet said that a
+million once lost in Mexico was returned, with a small flock of other
+millions; for a mine, in which it was sunk, had burst forth with a stony
+stream of silver.  And behold!  Thomas Tilman Lacey, the despised waster
+of his patrimony and of other people's treasure, is now, O son of the
+fig-flower, richer than Kaid Pasha and all his eunuchs."
+
+Suddenly Mahommed Hassan leaned forward, then backward, and, after the
+fashion of desert folk, gave a shrill, sweet ululation that seemed to
+fill the palace.
+
+"Say, that's A1," Lacey said, when Mahommed's voice sank to a whisper of
+wild harmony.  "Yes, you can lick my boots, my noble sheikh of
+Manfaloot," he added, as Mahommed caught his feet and bent his head upon
+them.  "I wanted to do something like that myself.  Kiss 'em, honey;
+it'll do you good."
+
+After a moment, Mahommed drew back and squatted before him in an attitude
+of peace and satisfaction.  "The Saadat--you will help him?  You will
+give him money?"
+
+"Let's put it in this way, Mahommed: I'll invest in an expedition out of
+which I expect to get something worth while--concessions for mines and
+railways, et cetera."  He winked a round, blue eye.  "Business is
+business, and the way to get at the Saadat is to talk business; but you
+can make up your mind that,
+
+        "'To-morrow, we are pulling stakes for Shendy!
+          Are you coming to my party, O Nahoum?'"
+
+"By the prophet Abraham, but the news is great news," said Mahommed with
+a grin.  "But the Effendina?"
+
+"Well, I'll try and square the Effendina," answered Lacey.  "Perhaps the
+days of backsheesh aren't done in Egypt, after all."
+
+"And Nahoum Pasha?" asked Mahommed, with a sinister look.
+
+"Well, we'll try and square him, too, but in another way."
+
+"The money, it is in Egypt?" queried Mahommed, whose idea was that money
+to be real must be seen.  "Something that's as handy and as marketable,"
+answered Lacey.  "I can raise half a million to-morrow; and that will do
+a lot of what we want.  How long will it take to ride to the monastery?"
+
+Mahommed told him.
+
+Lacey was about to leave the room, when he heard a voice outside.
+"Nahoum!" he said, and sat down again on the divan.  "He has come to see
+the Saadat, I suppose; but it'll do him good to see me, perhaps.  Open
+the sluices, Mahommed."
+
+Yes, Nahoum would be glad to see the effendi, since Claridge Pasha was
+not in Cairo.  When would Claridge Pasha return?  If, then, the effendi
+expected to see the Saadat before his return to Cairo, perhaps he would
+convey a message.  He could not urge his presence on the Saadat, since he
+had not been honoured with any communication since yesterday.
+
+"Well, that's good-mannered, anyhow, pasha," said Lacey with cheerful
+nonchalance.  "People don't always know when they're wanted or not
+wanted."
+
+Nahoum looked at him guardedly, sighed and sat down.  "Things have grown
+worse since yesterday," he said.  "Prince Kaid received the news badly."
+He shook his head.  "He has not the gift of perfect friendship.  That is
+a Christian characteristic; the Muslim does not possess it.  It was too
+strong to last, maybe--my poor beloved friend, the Saadat."
+
+"Oh, it will last all right," rejoined Lacey coolly.  "Prince Kaid has
+got a touch of jaundice, I guess.  He knows a thing when he finds it,
+even if he hasn't the gift of 'perfect friendship,' same as Christians
+like you and me.  But even you and me don't push our perfections too far
+--I haven't noticed you going out of your way to do things for your 'poor
+beloved friend, the Saadat'."
+
+"I have given him time, energy, experience--money."
+
+Lacey nodded.  "True.  And I've often wondered why, when I've seen the
+things you didn't give and the things you took away."
+
+Nahoum's eyes half closed.  Lacey was getting to close quarters with
+suspicion and allusion; but it was not his cue to resent them yet.
+
+"I had come now to offer him help; to advance him enough to carry through
+his expedition."
+
+"Well, that sounds generous, but I guess he would get on without it,
+pasha.  He would not want to be under any more obligations to you."
+
+"He is without money.  He must be helped."
+
+"Just so."
+
+"He cannot go to the treasury, and Prince Kaid has refused.  Why should
+he decline help from his friend?"  Suddenly Lacey changed his tactics.
+He had caught a look in Nahoum's eyes which gave him a new thought.
+"Well, if you've any proposition, pasha, I'll take it to him.  I'll be
+seeing him to-night."
+
+"I can give him fifty thousand pounds."
+
+"It isn't enough to save the situation, pasha."
+
+"It will help him over the first zareba."
+
+"Are there any conditions?"  "There are no conditions, effendi."  "And
+interest?"
+
+"There would be no interest in money."
+
+"Other considerations?"
+
+"Yes, other considerations, effendi."
+
+"If they were granted, would there be enough still in the stocking to
+help him over a second zareba--or a third, perhaps?"
+
+"That would be possible, even likely, I think.  Of course we speak in
+confidence, effendi."
+
+"The confidence of the 'perfect friendship.'"
+
+"There may be difficulty, because the Saadat is sensitive; but it is the
+only way to help him.  I can get the money from but one source; and to
+get it involves an agreement."
+
+"You think his Excellency would not just jump at it--that it might hurt
+some of his prejudices, eh?"
+
+"So, effendi."
+
+"And me--where am I in it, pasha?"
+
+"Thou hast great influence with his Excellency."
+
+"I am his servant--I don't meddle with his prejudices, pasha."
+
+"But if it were for his own good, to save his work here."
+
+Lacey yawned almost ostentatiously.  "I guess if he can't save it himself
+it can't be saved, not even when you reach out the hand of perfect
+friendship.  You've been reaching out for a long time, pasha, and it
+didn't save the steamer or the cotton-mills; and it didn't save us when
+we were down by Sobat a while ago, and you sent Halim Bey to teach us to
+be patient.  We got out of that nasty corner by sleight of hand, but not
+your sleight of hand, pasha.  Your hand is a quick hand, but a sharp eye
+can see the trick, and then it's no good, not worth a button."
+
+There was something savage behind Nahoum's eyes, but they did not show
+it; they blinked with earnest kindness and interest.  The time would come
+when Lacey would go as his master should go, and the occasion was not far
+off now; but it must not be forced.  Besides, was this fat, amorous-
+looking factotum of Claridge Pasha's as Spartan-minded as his master?
+Would he be superior to the lure of gold?  He would see.  He spoke
+seriously, with apparent solicitude.
+
+"Thou dost not understand, effendi.  Claridge Pasha must have money.
+Prestige is everything in Egypt, it is everything with Kaid.  If Claridge
+Pasha rides on as though nothing has happened--and money is the only
+horse that can carry him--Kaid will not interfere, and his black mood
+may pass; but any halting now and the game is done."
+
+"And you want the game to go on right bad, don't you?  Well, I guess
+you're right.  Money is the only winner in this race.  He's got to have
+money, sure.  How much can you raise?  Oh, yes, you told me!  Well, I
+don't think it's enough; he's got to have three times that; and if he
+can't get it from the Government, or from Kaid, it's a bad lookout.
+What's the bargain you have in your mind?"
+
+"That the slave-trade continue, effendi."
+
+Lacey did not wink, but he had a shock of surprise.  On the instant he
+saw the trap--for the Saadat and for himself.
+
+"He would not do it--not for money, pasha."
+
+"He would not be doing it for money.  The time is not ripe for it, it is
+too dangerous.  There is a time for all things.  If he will but wait!"
+
+"I wouldn't like to be the man that'd name the thing to him.  As you say,
+he's got his prejudices.  They're stronger than in most men."
+
+"It need not be named to him.  Thou canst accept the money for him, and
+when thou art in the Soudan, and he is going to do it, thou canst prevent
+it."
+
+"Tell him that I've taken the money and that he's used it, and he
+oughtn't to go back on the bargain I made for him?  So that he'll be
+bound by what I did?"
+
+"It is the best way, effendi."
+
+"He'd be annoyed," said Lacey with a patient sigh.
+
+"He has a great soul; but sometimes he forgets that expediency is the
+true policy."
+
+"Yet he's done a lot of things without it.  He's never failed in what he
+set out to do.  What he's done has been kicked over, but he's done it all
+right, somehow, at last."
+
+"He will not be able to do this, effendi, except with my help--and
+thine."
+
+"He's had quite a lot of things almost finished, too," said Lacey
+reflectively, "and then a hand reached out in the dark and cut the wires
+--cut them when he was sleeping, and he didn't know; cut them when he was
+waking, and he wouldn't understand; cut them under his own eyes, and he
+wouldn't see; because the hand that cut them was the hand of the perfect
+friend."
+
+He got slowly to his feet, as a cloud of colour drew over the face of
+Nahoum and his eyes darkened with astonishment and anger.  Lacey put his
+hands in his pockets and waited till Nahoum also rose.  Then he gathered
+the other's eyes to his, and said with drawling scorn:
+
+"So, you thought I didn't understand!  You thought I'd got a brain like a
+peanut, and wouldn't drop onto your game or the trap you've set.  You'd
+advance money--got from the slave-dealers to prevent the slave-trade
+being stopped!  If Claridge Pasha took it and used it, he could never
+stop the slave-trade.  If I took it and used it for him on the same
+terms, he couldn't stop the slave-trade, though he might know no more
+about the bargain than a babe unborn.  And if he didn't stand by the
+bargain I made, and did prohibit slave-dealing, nothing'd stop the tribes
+till they marched into Cairo.  He's been safe so far, because they
+believed in him, and because he'd rather die a million deaths than go
+crooked.  Say, I've been among the Dagos before--down in Mexico--and I'm
+onto you.  I've been onto you for a good while; though there was nothing
+I could spot certain; but now I've got you, and I'll break the 'perfect
+friendship' or I'll eat my shirt.  I'll--"
+
+He paused, realising the crisis in which David was moving, and that
+perils were thick around their footsteps.  But, even as he thought of
+them, he remembered David's own frank, fearless audacity in danger and
+difficulty, and he threw discretion to the winds.  He flung his flag
+wide, and believed with a belief as daring as David's that all would be
+well.
+
+"Well, what wilt thou do?" asked Nahoum with cool and deadly menace.
+"Thou wilt need to do it quickly, because, if it is a challenge, within
+forty-eight hours Claridge Pasha and thyself will be gone from Egypt--or
+I shall be in the Nile."
+
+"I'll take my chances, pasha," answered Lacey, with equal coolness.  "You
+think you'll win.  It's not the first time I've had to tackle men like
+you--they've got the breed in Mexico.  They beat me there, but I learned
+the game, and I've learned a lot from you, too.  I never knew what your
+game was here.  I only know that the Saadat saved your life, and got you
+started again with Kaid.  I only know that you called yourself a
+Christian, and worked on him till he believed in you, and Hell might
+crackle round you, but he'd believe, till he saw your contract signed
+with the Devil--and then he'd think the signature forged.  But he's got
+to know now.  We are not going out of Egypt, though you may be going to
+the Nile; but we are going to the Soudan, and with Kaid's blessing, too.
+You've put up the bluff, and I take it.  Be sure you've got Kaid solid,
+for, if you haven't, he'll be glad to know where you keep the money you
+got from the slave-dealers."
+
+Nahoum shrugged his shoulders.  "Who has seen the money?  Where is the
+proof?  Kaid would know my reasons.  It is not the first time virtue has
+been tested in Egypt, or the first time that it has fallen."
+
+In spite of himself Lacey laughed.  "Say, that's worthy of a great
+Christian intellect.  You are a bright particular star, pasha.  I take it
+back--they'd learn a lot from you in Mexico.  But the only trouble with
+lying is, that the demand becomes so great you can't keep all the cards
+in your head, and then the one you forget does you.  The man that isn't
+lying has the pull in the long run.  You are out against us, pasha, and
+we'll see how we stand in forty-eight hours.  You have some cards up your
+sleeve, I suppose; but--well, I'm taking you on.  I'm taking you on with
+a lot of joy, and some sorrow, too, for we might have pulled off a big
+thing together, you and Claridge Pasha, with me to hold the stirrups.
+Now it's got to be war.  You've made it so.  It's a pity, for when we
+grip there'll be a heavy fall."
+
+"For a poor man thou hast a proud stomach."
+
+"Well, I'll admit the stomach, pasha.  It's proud; and it's strong, too;
+it's stood a lot in Egypt; it's standing a lot to-day."
+
+"We'll ease the strain, perhaps," sneered Nahoum.  He made a perfunctory
+salutation and walked briskly from the room.
+
+Mahommed Hassan crept in, a malicious grin on his face.  Danger and
+conflict were as meat and drink to him.
+
+"Effendi, God hath given thee a wasp's sting to thy tongue.  It is well.
+Nahoum Pasha hath Mizraim: the Saadat hath thee and me."
+
+"There's the Effendina," said Lacey reflectively.  "Thou saidst thou
+would 'square' him, effendi."
+
+"I say a lot," answered Lacey rather ruefully.  "Come, Mahommed, the
+Saadat first, and the sooner the better."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE STRUGGLE IN THE DESERT
+
+     "And His mercy is on them that fear Him throughout all generations."
+
+On the clear, still evening air the words rang out over the desert,
+sonorous, imposing, peaceful.  As the notes of the verse died away the
+answer came from other voices in deep, appealing antiphonal:
+
+     "He hath showed strength with His arm, He hath scattered the proud
+     in the imagination of their hearts."
+
+Beyond the limits of the monastery there was not a sign of life; neither
+beast nor bird, nor blade of grass, nor any green thing; only the perfect
+immemorial blue, and in the east a misty moon, striving in vain to offer
+light which the earth as yet rejected for the brooding radiance of the
+descending sun.  But at the great door of the monastery there grew a
+stately palm, and near by an ancient acacia-tree; and beyond the stone
+chapel there was a garden of struggling shrubs and green things, with one
+rose-tree which scattered its pink leaves from year to year upon the
+loam, since no man gathered bud or blossom.
+
+The triumphant call of the Magnificat, however beautiful, seemed
+strangely out of place in this lonely island in a sea of sand.  It was
+the song of a bannered army, marching over the battle-field with
+conquering voices, and swords as yet unsheathed and red, carrying the
+spoils of conquest behind the laurelled captain of the host.  The
+crumbling and ancient walls were surrounded by a moat which a stranger's
+foot crossed hardly from moon to moon, which the desert wayfarer sought
+rarely, since it was out of the track of caravans, and because food was
+scant in the refectory of this Coptic brotherhood.  It was scarce five
+hours' ride from the Palace of the Prince Pasha: but it might have been a
+thousand miles away, so profoundly separate was it from the world of
+vital things and deeds of men.
+
+As the chant rang out, confident, majestic, and serene, carried by voices
+of power and shrill sweetness, which only the desert can produce, it
+might have seemed to any listener that this monastery was all that
+remained of some ancient kingdom of brimming, active cities, now lying
+beneath the obliterating sand, itself the monument and memorial of a
+breath of mercy of the Destroyer, the last refuge of a few surviving
+captains of a departed greatness.  Hidden by the grey, massive walls,
+built as it were to resist the onset of a ravaging foe, the swelling
+voices might well have been those of some ancient order of valiant
+knights, whose banners hung above them, the 'riclame' of their deeds.
+But they were voices and voices only; for they who sang were as unkempt
+and forceless as the lonely wall which shut them in from the insistent
+soul of the desert.
+
+Desolation?  The desert was not desolate.  Its face was bare and burning,
+it slaked no man's thirst, gave no man food, save where scattered oases
+were like the breasts of a vast mother eluding the aching lips of her
+parched children; but the soul of the desert was living and inspiring,
+beating with vitality.  It was life that burned like flame.  If the
+water-skin was dry and the date-bag empty it smothered and destroyed; but
+it was life; and to those who ventured into its embrace, obeying the
+conditions of the sharp adventure, it gave what neither sea, nor green
+plain, nor high mountain, nor verdant valley could give--a consuming
+sense of power, which found its way to the deepest recesses of being.
+Out upon the vast sea of sand, where the descending sun was spreading a
+note of incandescent colour, there floated the grateful words:
+
+     "He remembering His mercy hath holpen His servant Israel; as He
+     promised to our forefathers, Abraham, and his seed for ever."
+
+Then the antiphonal ceased; and together the voices of all within the
+place swelled out in the Gloria and the Amen, and seemed to pass away in
+ever-receding vibrations upon the desert, till it was lost in the
+comforting sunset.
+
+As the last note died away, a voice from beneath the palm-tree near the
+door, deeper than any that had come from within, said reverently: "Ameen-
+Ameen !"
+
+He who spoke was a man well over sixty years, with a grey beard, lofty
+benign forehead, and the eyes of a scholar and a dreamer.  As he uttered
+the words of spiritual assent, alike to the Muslim and the Christian
+religion, he rose to his feet, showing the figure of a man of action,
+alert, well-knit, authoritative.  Presently he turned towards the East
+and stretched a robe upon the ground, and with stately beauty of gesture
+he spread out his hands, standing for a moment in the attitude of
+aspiration.  Then, kneeling, he touched his turbaned head to the ground
+three times, and as the sun drew down behind the sharp, bright line of
+sand that marked the horizon, he prayed devoutly and long.  It was Ebn
+Ezra Bey.
+
+Muslim though he was, he had visited this monastery many times, to study
+the ancient Christian books which lay in disordered heaps in an ill-kept
+chamber, books which predated the Hegira, and were as near to the life of
+the Early Church as the Scriptures themselves--or were so reputed.
+Student and pious Muslim as he was, renowned at El Azhar and at every
+Muslim university in the Eastern world, he swore by the name of Christ as
+by that of Abraham, Isaac, and all the prophets, though to him Mahomet
+was the last expression of Heaven's will to mankind.  At first received
+at the monastery with unconcealed aversion, and not without danger to
+himself, he had at last won to him the fanatical monks, who, in spirit,
+kept this ancient foundation as rigid to their faith as though it were in
+mediaeval times.  And though their discipline was lax, and their daily
+duties orderless, this was Oriental rather than degenerate.  Here Ebn
+Ezra had stayed for weeks at a time in the past, not without some
+religious scandal, long since forgotten.
+
+His prayers ended, he rose up slowly, once more spread out his hands in
+ascription, and was about to enter the monastery, when, glancing towards
+the west, he saw a horseman approaching.  An instinct told him who it was
+before he could clearly distinguish the figure, and his face lighted with
+a gentle and expectant smile.  Then his look changed.
+
+"He is in trouble," he murmured.  "As it was with his uncle in Damascus,
+so will it be with him.  Malaish, we are in the will of God!"
+
+The hand that David laid in Ebn Ezra's was hot and nervous, the eyes that
+drank in the friendship of the face which had seen two Claridges emptying
+out their lives in the East were burning and famished by long fasting
+of the spirit, forced abstinence from the pleasures of success and
+fruition-haunting, desiring eyes, where flamed a spirit which consumed
+the body and the indomitable mind.  The lips, however, had their old
+trick of smiling, though the smile which greeted Ebn Ezra Bey had a
+melancholy which touched the desert-worn, life-spent old Arab as he had
+not been touched since a smile, just like this, flashed up at him from
+the weather-stained, dying face of quaint Benn Claridge in a street of
+Damascus.  The natural duplicity of the Oriental had been abashed and
+inactive before the simple and astounding honesty of these two Quaker
+folk.
+
+He saw crisis written on every feature of the face before him.  Yet the
+scanty meal they ate with the monks in the ancient room was enlivened by
+the eager yet quiet questioning of David, to whom the monks responded
+with more spirit than had been often seen in this arid retreat.  The
+single torch which spluttered from the wall as they drank their coffee
+lighted up faces as strange, withdrawn, and unconsciously secretive as
+ever gathered to greet a guest.  Dim tales had reached them of this
+Christian reformer and administrator, scraps of legend from stray camel-
+drivers, a letter from the Patriarch commanding them to pray blessings on
+his labours--who could tell what advantage might not come to the Coptic
+Church through him, a Christian!  On the dull, torpid faces, light seemed
+struggling to live for a moment, as David talked.  It was as though
+something in their meagre lives, which belonged to undeveloped feelings,
+was fighting for existence--a light struggling to break through murky
+veils of inexperience.
+
+Later, in the still night, however--still, though air vibrated
+everywhere, as though the desert breathed an ether which was to fill
+men's veins with that which quieted the fret and fever of life's
+disillusions and forgeries and failures--David's speech with Ebn Ezra Bey
+was of a different sort.  If, as it seems ever in the desert, an
+invisible host of beings, once mortal, now immortal, but suspensive and
+understanding, listened to the tale he unfolded, some glow of pity must
+have possessed them; for it was an Iliad of herculean struggle against
+absolute disaster, ending with the bitter news of his grandfather's
+death.  It was the story of AEdipus overcome by events too strong for
+soul to bear.  In return, as the stars wheeled on, and the moon stole to
+the zenith, majestic and slow, Ebn Ezra offered to his troubled friend
+only the philosophy of the predestinarian, mingled with the calm of the
+stoic.  But something antagonistic to his own dejection, to the Muslim's
+fatalism, emerged from David's own altruism, to nerve him to hope and
+effort still.  His unconquerable optimism rose determinedly to the
+surface, even as he summed up and related the forces working against him.
+
+"They have all come at once," he said; "all the activities opposing me,
+just as though they had all been started long ago at different points,
+with a fixed course to run, and to meet and give me a fall in the hour
+when I could least resist.  You call it Fate.  I call it what it proves
+itself to be.  But here it is a hub of danger and trouble, and the spokes
+of disaster are flying to it from all over the compass, to make the wheel
+that will grind me; and all the old troop of Palace intriguers and
+despoilers are waiting to heat the tire and fasten it on the machine of
+torture.  Kaid has involved himself in loans which press, in foolish
+experiments in industry without due care; and now from ill-health and bad
+temper comes a reaction towards the old sinister rule, when the
+Prince shuts his eyes and his agents ruin and destroy.  Three nations who
+have intrigued against my work see their chance, and are at Kaid's elbow.
+The fate of the Soudan is in the balance.  It is all as the shake of a
+feather.  I can save it if I go; but, just as I am ready, my mills burn
+down, my treasury dries up, Kaid turns his back on me, and the toil of
+years is swept away in a night.  Thee sees it is terrible, friend?"
+
+Ebn Ezra looked at him seriously and sadly for a moment, and then said:
+"Is it given one man to do all?  If many men had done these things, then
+there had been one blow for each.  Now all falls on thee, Saadat.  Is it
+the will of God that one man should fling the lance, fire the cannon, dig
+the trenches, gather food for the army, drive the horses on to battle,
+and bury the dead?  Canst thou do all?"
+
+David's eyes brightened to the challenge.  "There was the work to do, and
+there were not the many to do it.  My hand was ready; the call came; I
+answered.  I plunged into the river of work alone."
+
+"Thou didst not know the strength of the currents, the eddies and the
+whirlpools, the hidden rocks--and the shore is far off, Saadat."
+
+"It is not so far but that, if I could get breath to gather strength,
+I should reach the land in time.  Money--ah, but enough for this
+expedition!  That over, order, quiet yonder, my own chosen men as
+governors, and I could"--he pointed towards the southern horizon--
+"I could plant my foot in Cairo, and from the centre control the great
+machinery--with Kaid's help; and God's help.  A sixth of a million, and
+Kaid's hand behind me, and the boat would lunge free of the sand-banks
+and churn on, and churn on.  .  .  .  Friend," he added, with the winning
+insistence that few found it possible to resist, "if all be well, and we
+go thither, wilt thou become the governor-general yonder?  With thee to
+rule justly where there is most need of justice, the end would be sure--
+if it be the will of God."
+
+Ebn Ezra Bey sat for a moment looking into the worn, eager face,
+indistinct in the moonlight, then answered slowly: "I am seventy, and the
+years smite hard as they pass, and there or here, it little matters when
+I go, as I must go; and whether it be to bend the lance, or bear the flag
+before thee, or rule a Mudirieh, what does it matter!  I will go with
+thee," he added hastily; "but it is better thou shouldst not go.  Within
+the last three days I have news from the South.  All that thou hast done
+there is in danger now.  The word for revolt has passed from tribe to
+tribe.  A tongue hath spoken, and a hand hath signalled "--his voice
+lowered--" and I think I know the tongue and the hand!"  He paused; then,
+as David did not speak, continued: "Thou who art wise in most things,
+dost decline to seek for thy foe in him who eateth from the same dish
+with thee.  Only when it is too late thou wilt defend thyself and all who
+keep faith with thee."
+
+David's face clouded.  "Nahoum, thou dost mean Nahoum?  But thou dost not
+understand, and there is no proof."
+
+"As a camel knows the coming storm while yet the sky is clear, by that
+which the eye does not see, so do I feel Nahoum.  The evils thou hast
+suffered, Saadat, are from his hand, if from any hand in Egypt--"
+
+Suddenly he leaned over and touched David's arm.  "Saadat, it is of no
+avail.  There is none in Egypt that desires good; thy task is too great.
+All men will deceive thee; if not now, yet in time.  If Kaid favours thee
+once more, and if it is made possible for thee to go to the Soudan, yet I
+pray thee to stay here.  Better be smitten here, where thou canst get
+help from thine own country, if need be, than yonder, where they but wait
+to spoil thy work and kill thee.  Thou art young; wilt thou throw thy
+life away?  Art thou not needed here as there?  For me it is nothing,
+whether it be now or in a few benumbing years; but for thee--is there no
+one whom thou lovest so well that thou wouldst not shelter thy life to
+spare that life sorrow?  Is there none that thou lovest so, and that will
+love thee to mortal sorrow, if thou goest without care to thy end too
+soon?"
+
+As a warm wind suddenly sweeps across the cool air of a summer evening
+for an instant, suffocating and unnerving, so Ebn Ezra's last words swept
+across David's spirit.  His breath came quicker, his eyes half closed.
+"Is there none that thou lovest so, and that will love thee to mortal
+sorrow, if--"
+
+As a hand secretly and swiftly slips the lever that opens the sluice-
+gates of a dike, while the watchman turns away for a moment to look at
+the fields which the waters enrich and the homes of poor folk whom the
+gates defend, so, in a moment, when off his guard, worn with watching and
+fending, as it were, Ebn Ezra had sprung the lever, and a flood of
+feeling swept over David, drowned him in its impulse and pent-up force.
+
+"Is there none that thou lovest so--"  Of what use had been all his
+struggle and his pain since that last day in Hamley--his dark fighting
+days in the desert with Lacey and Mahommed, and his handful of faithful
+followers, hemmed in by dangers, the sands swarming with Arabs who
+feathered now to his safety, now to his doom, and his heart had hungered
+for what he had denied it with a will that would not be conquered?
+Wasted by toil and fever and the tension of danger and the care of
+others dependent on him, he had also fought a foe which was ever at his
+elbow, ever whispered its comfort and seduction in his ear, the insidious
+and peace-giving, exalting opiate that had tided him over some black
+places, and then had sought for mastery of him when he was back again in
+the world of normal business and duty, where it appealed not as a
+medicine, but as a perilous luxury.  And fighting this foe, which had a
+voice so soothing, and words like the sound of murmuring waters, and a
+cool and comforting hand that sought to lead him into gardens of
+stillness and passive being, where he could no more hear the clangour and
+vexing noises of a world that angered and agonised, there had also been
+the lure of another passion of the heart, which was too perilously dear
+to contemplate.  Eyes that were beautiful, and their beauty was not for
+him; a spirit that was bright and glowing, but the brightness and the
+glow might not renew his days.  It was hard to fight alone.  Alone he
+was, for only to one may the doors within doors be opened-only to one so
+dear that all else is everlastingly distant may the true tale of the life
+beneath life be told.  And it was not for him--nothing of this; not even
+the thought of it; for to think of it was to desire it, and to desire it
+was to reach out towards it; and to reach out towards it was the end of
+all.  There had been moments of abandonment to the alluring dream, such
+as when he wrote the verses which Lacey had sent to Hylda from the
+desert; but they were few.  Oft-repeated, they would have filled him with
+an agitated melancholy impossible to be borne in the life which must be
+his.
+
+So it had been.  The deeper into life and its labours and experiences he
+had gone, the greater had been his temptations, born of two passions, one
+of the body and its craving, the other of the heart and its desires: and
+he had fought on--towards the morning.
+
+"Is there none that thou lovest so, and that will love thee to mortal
+sorrow, if thou goest without care to thy end too soon?"  The desert, the
+dark monastery, the acacia tree, the ancient palm, the ruinous garden,
+disappeared.  He only saw a face which smiled at him, as it had done 'by
+the brazier in the garden at Cairo, that night when she and Nahoum and
+himself and Mizraim had met in the room of his house by the Ezbekieh
+gardens, and she had gone out to her old life in England, and he had
+taken up the burden of the East--that long six years ago.  His head
+dropped in his hands, and all that was beneath the Quaker life he had led
+so many years, packed under the crust of form and habit, and regulated
+thought, and controlled emotion, broke forth now, and had its way with
+him.
+
+He turned away staggering and self-reproachful from the first question,
+only to face the other--"And that will love thee to mortal sorrow, if
+thou goest without care to thy end too soon."  It was a thought he had
+never let himself dwell on for an instant in all the days since they had
+last met.  He had driven it back to its covert, even before he could
+recognise its face.  It was disloyal to her, an offence against all that
+she was, an affront to his manhood to let the thought have place in his
+mind even for one swift moment.  She was Lord Eglington's wife--there
+could be no sharing of soul and mind and body and the exquisite devotion
+of a life too dear for thought.  Nothing that she was to Eglington could
+be divided with another, not for an hour, not by one act of impulse; or
+else she must be less, she that might have been, if there had been no
+Eglington--
+
+An exclamation broke from him, and, as one crying out in one's sleep
+wakes himself, so the sharp cry of his misery woke him from the trance of
+memory that had been upon him, and he slowly became conscious of Ebn Ezra
+standing before him.  Their eyes met, and Ebn Ezra spoke:
+
+"The will of Allah be thy will, Saadat.  If it be to go to the Soudan,
+I am thine; if it be to stay, I am thy servant and thy brother.  But
+whether it be life or death, thou must sleep, for the young are like
+water without sleep.  Thou canst not live in strength nor die with
+fortitude without it.  For the old, malaish, old age is between a
+sleeping and a waking!  Come, Saadat!  Forget not, thou must ride again
+to Cairo at dawn."
+
+David got slowly to his feet and turned towards the monastery.  The
+figure of a monk stood in the doorway with a torch to light him to his
+room.
+
+He turned to Ebn Ezra again.  "Does thee think that I have aught of his
+courage--my Uncle Benn?  Thou knowest me--shall I face it out as did he?"
+
+"Saadat," the old man answered, pointing, "yonder acacia, that was he,
+quick to grow and short to live; but thou art as this date-palm, which
+giveth food to the hungry, and liveth through generations.  Peace be upon
+thee," he added at the doorway, as the torch flickered towards the room
+where David was to lie.
+
+"And upon thee, peace!" answered David gently, and followed the smoky
+light to an inner chamber.  The room in which David found himself was
+lofty and large, but was furnished with only a rough wooden bed, a rug,
+and a brazier.  Left alone, he sat down on the edge of the bed, and, for
+a few moments, his mind strayed almost vaguely from one object to
+another.  From two windows far up in the wall the moonlight streamed in,
+making bars of light aslant the darkness.
+
+Not a sound broke the stillness.  Yet, to his sensitive nerves, the air
+seemed tingling with sensation, stirring with unseen activities.  Here
+the spirit of the desert seemed more insistent in its piercing vitality,
+because it was shut in by four stone walls.
+
+Mechanically he took off his coat, and was about to fold and lay it on
+the rug beside the bed, when something hard in one of the pockets knocked
+against his knee.  Searching, he found and drew forth a small bottle
+which, for many a month past, had lain in the drawer of a table where he
+had placed it on his return from the Soudan.  It was an evil spirit which
+sent this tiny phial to his hand at a moment when he had paid out of the
+full treasury of his strength and will its accumulated deposit, leaving
+him with a balance on which no heavy draft could be made.  His pulse
+quickened, then his body stiffened with the effort at self-control.
+
+Who placed this evil elixir in his pocket?  What any enemy of his work
+had done was nothing to what might be achieved by the secret foe, who had
+placed this anodyne within his reach at this the most critical moment of
+his life.  He remembered the last time he had used it--in the desert:
+two days of forgetfulness to the world, when it all moved by him, the
+swarming Arabs, the train of camels, the loads of ivory, the slimy
+crocodile on the sandbanks, the vultures hovering above unburied
+carcasses, the kourbash descending on shining black shoulders,
+corrugating bare brown bodies into cloven skin and lacerated flesh, a
+fight between champions of two tribes who clasped and smote and struggled
+and rained blows, and, both mortally wounded, still writhed in last
+conflict upon the ground--and Mahommed Hassan ever at the tent door or by
+his side, towering, watchful, sullen to all faces without, smiling to his
+own, with dog-like look waiting for any motion of his hand or any
+word....  Ah, Mahommed Hassan, it was he!  Mahommed had put this phial in
+his pocket.  His bitter secret was not hidden from Mahommed.  And this
+was an act of supreme devotion--to put at his hand the lulling, inspiring
+draught.  Did this fellah servant know what it meant--the sin of it, the
+temptation, the terrible joy, the blessed quiet; and then, the agonising
+remorse, the withering self-hatred and torturing penitence?  No, Mahommed
+only knew that when the Saadat was gone beyond his strength, when the
+sleepless nights and feverish days came in the past, in their great
+troubles, when men were dying and only the Saadat could save, that this
+cordial lifted him out of misery and storm into calm.  Yet Mahommed must
+have divined that it was a thing against which his soul revolted, or he
+would have given it to him openly.  In the heart and mind of the giant
+murderer, however, must have been the thought that now when trouble was
+upon his master again, trouble which might end all, this supreme
+destroyer of pain and dark memory and present misery, would give him the
+comfort he needed--and that he would take it.
+
+If he had not seen it, this sudden craving would not have seized him for
+this eager beguiling, this soothing benevolence.  Yet here it was in his
+hand; and even as it lay in his cold fingers--how cold they were, and his
+head how burning!--the desire for it surged up in him.  And, as though
+the thing itself had the magical power to summon up his troubles, that it
+might offer the apathy and stimulus in one--even as it lured him, his
+dangers, his anxieties, the black uncertainties massed, multiplied and
+aggressive, rose before him, buffeted him, caught at his throat, dragged
+down his shoulders, clutched at his heart.
+
+Now, with a cry of agony, he threw the phial on the ground, and, sinking
+on the bed, buried his face in his hands and moaned, and fought for
+freedom from the cords tightening round him.  It was for him to realise
+now how deep are the depths to which the human soul can sink, even while
+labouring to climb.  Once more the sense of awful futility was on him: of
+wasted toil and blenched force, veins of energy drained of their blood,
+hope smitten in the way, and every dear dream shattered.  Was it, then,
+all ended?  Was his work indeed fallen, and all his love undone?  Was his
+own redemption made impossible?  He had offered up his life to this land
+to atone for a life taken when she--when she first looked up with eyes of
+gratitude, eyes that haunted him.  Was it, then, unacceptable?  Was it so
+that he must turn his back upon this long, heart-breaking but beloved
+work, this panacea for his soul, without which he could not pay the price
+of blood?
+
+Go back to England--to Hamley where all had changed, where the old man he
+loved no longer ruled in the Red Mansion, where all that had been could
+be no more?  Go to some other land, and there begin again another such a
+work?  Were there not vast fields of human effort, effort such as his,
+where he could ease the sorrow of living by the joy of a divine altruism?
+Go back to Hamley?  Ah, no, a million times, no!  That life was dead, it
+was a cycle of years behind him.  There could be no return.  He was in a
+maelstrom of agony, his veins were afire, his lips were parched.  He
+sprang from his bed, knelt down, and felt for the little phial he had
+flung aside.  After a moment his hand caught it, clutched it.  But, even
+at the crest of the wave of temptation, words that he had heard one night
+in Hamley, that last night of all, flashed into his mind--the words
+of old Luke Claridge's prayer, "And if a viper fasten on his hand,
+O Lord--"
+
+Suddenly he paused.  That scene in the old Meetinghouse swam before his
+eyes, got into his brain.  He remembered the words of his own prayer, and
+how he had then retreated upon the Power that gave him power, for a
+draught of the one true tincture which braced the heart to throw itself
+upon the spears of trial.  Now the trial had come, and that which was in
+him as deep as being, the habit of youth, the mother-fibre and
+predisposition, responded to the draught he had drunk then.  As a body
+freed from the quivering, unrelenting grasp of an electric battery
+subsides into a cool quiet, so, through his veins seemed to pass an ether
+which stilled the tumult, the dark desire to drink the potion in his
+hand, and escape into that irresponsible, artificial world, where he had
+before loosened his hold on activity.
+
+The phial slipped from his fingers to the floor.  He sank upon the side
+of the bed, and, placing his hands on his knees, he whispered a few
+broken words that none on earth was meant to hear.  Then he passed into a
+strange and moveless quiet of mind and body.  Many a time in days gone
+by--far-off days--had he sat as he was doing now, feeling his mind pass
+into a soft, comforting quiet, absorbed in a sensation of existence, as
+it were between waking and sleeping, where doors opened to new experience
+and understanding, where the mind seemed to loose itself from the bonds
+of human necessity and find a freer air.
+
+Now, as he sat as still as the stone in the walls around him, he was
+conscious of a vision forming itself before his eyes.  At first it was
+indefinite, vague, without clear form, but at last it became a room dimly
+outlined, delicately veiled, as it were.  Then it seemed, not that
+the mist cleared, but that his eyes became stronger, and saw through the
+delicate haze; and now the room became wholly, concretely visible.
+
+It was the room in which he had said good-bye to Hylda.  As he gazed like
+one entranced, he saw a figure rise from a couch, pale, agitated, and
+beautiful, and come forward, as it were, towards him.  But suddenly the
+mist closed in again upon the scene, a depth of darkness passed his eyes,
+and he heard a voice say: "Speak--speak to me!"
+
+He heard her voice as distinctly as though she were beside him--as,
+indeed, she had stood before him but an instant ago.
+
+Getting slowly to his feet, into the night he sent an answer to the call.
+
+Would she hear?  She had said long ago that she would speak to him so.
+Perhaps she had tried before.  But now at last he had heard and answered.
+Had she heard?  Time might tell--if ever they met again.  But how good,
+and quiet, and serene was the night!
+
+He composed himself to sleep, but, as he lay waiting for that coverlet of
+forgetfulness to be drawn over him, he heard the sound of bells soft and
+clear.  Just such bells he had heard upon the common at Hamley.  Was it,
+then, the outcome of his vision--a sweet hallucination?  He leaned upon
+his elbow and listened.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+FORTY STRIPES SAVE ONE
+
+The bells that rang were not the bells of Hamley; they were part of no
+vision or hallucination, and they drew David out of his chamber into the
+night.  A little group of three stood sharply silhouetted against the
+moonlight, and towering above them was the spare, commanding form of Ebn
+Ezra Bey.  Three camels crouched near, and beside them stood a Nubian lad
+singing to himself the song of the camel-driver:
+
+         "Fleet is thy foot: thou shalt rest by the Etl tree;
+          Water shalt thou drink from the blue-deep well;
+          Allah send His gard'ner with the green bersim,
+          For thy comfort, fleet one, by the Etl tree.
+          As the stars fly, have thy footsteps flown
+          Deep is the well, drink, and be still once more;
+          Till the pursuing winds panting have found thee
+          And, defeated, sink still beside thee--
+          By the well and the Etl tree."
+
+For a moment David stood in the doorway listening to the low song of the
+camel-driver.  Then he came forward.  As he did so, one of the two who
+stood with Ebn Ezra moved towards the monastery door slowly.  It was a
+monk with a face which, even in this dim light, showed a deathly
+weariness.  The eyes looked straight before him, as though they saw
+nothing of the world, only a goal to make, an object to be accomplished.
+The look of the face went to David's heart--the kinship of pain was
+theirs.
+
+"Peace be to thee," David said gently, as the other passed him.
+
+There was an instant's pause, and then the monk faced him with fingers
+uplifted.  "The grace of God be upon thee, David," he said, and his eyes,
+drawn back from the world where they had been exploring, met the other's
+keenly.  Then he wheeled and entered the monastery.
+
+"The grace of God be upon thee, David!"  How strange it sounded, this
+Christian blessing in response to his own Oriental greeting, out in this
+Eastern waste.  His own name, too.  It was as though he had been
+transported to the ancient world where "Brethren" were so few that they
+called each other by their "Christian" names--even as they did in Hamley
+to-day.  In Hamley to-day!  He closed his eyes, a tremor running through
+his body; and then, with an effort which stilled him to peace again, he
+moved forward, and was greeted by Ebn Ezra, from whom the third member of
+the little group had now drawn apart nearer to the acacia-tree, and was
+seated on a rock that jutted from the sand.  "What is it?" David asked.
+
+"Wouldst thou not sleep, Saadat?  Sleep is more to thee now than aught
+thou mayst hear from any man.  To all thou art kind save thyself."
+
+"I have rested," David answered, with a measured calmness, revealing to
+his friend the change which had come since they parted an hour before.
+They seated themselves under the palm-tree, and were silent for a moment,
+then Ebn Ezra said:
+
+"These come from the Place of Lepers."
+
+David started slightly.  "Zaida?" he asked, with a sigh of pity.
+
+"The monk who passed thee but now goes every year to the Place of Lepers
+with the caravan, for a brother of this order stays yonder with the
+afflicted, seeing no more the faces of this world which he has left
+behind.  Afar off from each other they stand--as far as eye can see--and
+after the manner of their faith they pray to Allah, and he who has just
+left us finds a paper fastened with a stone upon the sand at a certain
+place where he waits.  He touches it not, but reads it as it lies, and,
+having read, heaps sand upon it.  And the message which the paper gives
+is for me."
+
+"For thee?  Hast thou there one who--"
+
+"There was one, my father's son, though we were of different mothers; and
+in other days, so many years ago, he did great wrong to me, and not to me
+alone,"--the grey head bowed in sorrow--"but to one dearer to me than
+life.  I hated him, and would have slain him, but the mind of Allah is
+not the mind of man; and he escaped me.  Then he was stricken with
+leprosy, and was carried to the place from whence no leper returns.  At
+first my heart rejoiced; then, at last, I forgave him, Saadat--was he not
+my father's son, and was the woman not gone to the bosom of Allah, where
+is peace?  So I forgave and sorrowed for him--who shall say what miseries
+are those which, minute to minute, day after day, and year upon year,
+repeat themselves, till it is an endless flaying of the body and burning
+of the soul!  Every year I send a message to him, and every year now this
+Christian monk--there is no Sheikh-el-Islam yonder--brings back the
+written message which he finds in the sand."
+
+"And thee has had a message to-night?"
+
+"The last that may come--God be praised, he goeth to his long home.  It
+was written in his last hour.  There was no hope; he is gone.  And so,
+one more reason showeth why I should go where thou goest, Saadat."
+
+Casting his eyes toward the figure by the acacia-tree, his face clouded
+and he pondered anxiously, looking at David the while.  Twice he essayed
+to speak, but paused.
+
+David's eyes followed his look.  "What is it?  Who is he--yonder?"
+
+The other rose to his feet.  "Come and see, Saadat," he replied.
+"Seeing, thou wilt know what to do."
+
+"Zaida--is it of Zaida?" David asked.
+
+"The man will answer for himself, Saadat."  Coming within a few feet of
+the figure crouched upon the rock, Ebn Ezra paused and stretched out a
+hand.  "A moment, Saadat.  Dost thou not see, dost thou not recognise
+him?"
+
+David intently studied the figure, which seemed unconscious of their
+presence.  The shoulders were stooping and relaxed as though from great
+fatigue, but David could see that the figure was that of a tall man.  The
+head was averted, but a rough beard covered the face, and, in the light
+of the fire, one hand that clutched it showed long and skinny and yellow
+and cruel.  The hand fascinated David's eyes.  Where had he seen it?  It
+flashed upon him--a hand clutching a robe, in a frenzy of fear, in the
+court-yard of the blue tiles, in Kaid's Palace--Achmet the Ropemaker!
+He drew back a step.
+
+"Achmet," he said in a low voice.  The figure stirred, the hand dropped
+from the beard and clutched the knee; but the head was not raised, and
+the body remained crouching and listless.
+
+"He escaped?" David said, turning to Ebn Ezra Bey.
+
+"I know not by what means--a camel-driver bribed, perhaps, and a camel
+left behind for him.  After the caravan had travelled a day's journey he
+joined it.  None knew what to do.  He was not a leper, and he was armed."
+
+"Leave him with me," said David.
+
+Ebn Ezra hesitated.  "He is armed; he was thy foe--"
+
+"I am armed also," David answered enigmatically, and indicated by a
+gesture that he wished to be left alone.  Ebn Ezra drew away towards the
+palm-tree, and stood at this distance watching anxiously, for he knew
+what dark passions seize upon the Oriental--and Achmet had many things
+for which to take vengeance.
+
+David stood for a moment, pondering, his eyes upon the deserter.  "God
+greet thee as thou goest, and His goodness befriend thee," he said
+evenly.  There was silence, and no movement.  "Rise and speak," he added
+sternly.  "Dost thou not hear?  Rise, Achmet Pasha!"
+
+Achmet Pasha!  The head of the desolate wretch lifted, the eyes glared at
+David for an instant, as though to see whether he was being mocked, and
+then the spare figure stretched itself, and the outcast stood up.  The
+old lank straightness was gone, the shoulders were bent, the head was
+thrust forward, as though the long habit of looking into dark places had
+bowed it out of all manhood.
+
+"May grass spring under thy footstep, Saadat," he said, in a thick voice,
+and salaamed awkwardly--he had been so long absent from life's
+formularies.
+
+"What dost thou here, pasha?" asked David formally.  "Thy sentence had
+no limit."
+
+"I could not die there," said the hollow voice, and the head sank farther
+forward.  "Year after year I lived there, but I could not die among them.
+I was no leper; I am no leper.  My penalty was my penalty, and I paid
+it to the full, piastre by piastre of my body and my mind.  It was not
+one death, it was death every hour, every day I stayed.  I had no mind.
+I could not think.  Mummy-cloths were round my brain; but the fire burned
+underneath and would not die.  There was the desert, but my limbs were
+like rushes.  I had no will, and I could not flee.  I was chained to the
+evil place.  If I stayed it was death, if I went it was death."
+
+"Thou art armed now," said David suggestively.  Achmet laid a hand
+fiercely upon a dagger under his robe.  "I hid it.  I was afraid.  I
+could not die--my hand was like a withered leaf; it could not strike; my
+heart poured out like water.  Once I struck a leper, that he might strike
+and kill me; but he lay upon the ground and wept, for all his anger,
+which had been great, died in him at last.  There was none other given to
+anger there.  The leper has neither anger, nor mirth, nor violence, nor
+peace.  It is all the black silent shame--and I was no leper."
+
+"Why didst thou come?  What is there but death for thee here, or anywhere
+thou goest!  Kaid's arm will find thee; a thousand hands wait to strike
+thee."
+
+"I could not die there--Dost thou think that I repent?" he added with
+sudden fierceness.  "Is it that which would make me repent?  Was I worse
+than thousands of others?  I have come out to die--to fight and die.
+Aiwa, I have come to thee, whom I hated, because thou canst give me death
+as I desire it.  My mother was an Arab slave from Senaar, and she was got
+by war, and all her people.  War and fighting were their portion--as they
+ate, as they drank and slept.  In the black years behind me among the
+Unclean, there was naught to fight--could one fight the dead, and the
+agony of death, and the poison of the agony!  Life, it is done for me--
+am I not accursed?  But to die fighting--ay, fighting for Egypt, since it
+must be, and fighting for thee, since it must be; to strike, and strike,
+and strike, and earn death!  Must the dog, because he is a dog, die in
+the slime?  Shall he not be driven from the village to die in the clean
+sand?  Saadat, who will see in me Achmet Pasha, who did with Egypt what
+he willed, and was swept away by the besom in thy hand?  Is there in me
+aught of that Achmet that any should know?"
+
+"None would know thee for that Achmet," answered David.
+
+"I know, it matters not how--at last a letter found me, and the way of
+escape--that thou goest again to the Soudan.  There will be fighting
+there--"
+
+"Not by my will," interrupted David.
+
+"Then by the will of Sheitan the accursed; but there will be fighting--
+am I not an Arab, do I not know?  Thou hast not conquered yet.  Bid me go
+where thou wilt, do what thou wilt, so that I may be among the fighters,
+and in the battle forget what I have seen.  Since I am unclean, and am
+denied the bosom of Allah, shall I not go as a warrior to Hell, where men
+will fear me?  Speak, Saadat, canst thou deny me this?"
+
+Nothing of repentance, so far as he knew, moved the dark soul; but, like
+some evil spirit, he would choose the way to his own doom, the place and
+the manner of it: a sullen, cruel, evil being, unyielding in his evil,
+unmoved by remorse--so far as he knew.  Yet he would die fighting, and
+for Egypt "and for thee, if it must be so.  To strike, to strike, to
+strike, and earn death!"  What Achmet did not see, David saw, the glimmer
+of light breaking through the cloud of shame and evil and doom.  Yonder
+in the Soudan more problems than one would be solved, more lives than one
+be put to the extreme test.  He did not answer Achmet's question yet.
+"Zaida--?" he said in a low voice.  The pathos of her doom had been a
+dark memory.
+
+Achmet's voice dropped lower as he answered.  "She lived till the day her
+sister died.  I never saw her face; but I was sent to bear each day to
+her door the food she ate and a balass of water; and I did according to
+my sentence.  Yet I heard her voice.  And once, at last, the day she
+died, she spoke to me, and said from inside the hut: 'Thy work is done,
+Achmet.  Go in peace.'  And that night she lay down on her sister's
+grave, and in the morning she was found dead upon it."
+
+David's eyes were blinded with tears.  "It was too long," he said at
+last, as though to himself.
+
+"That day," continued Achmet, "there fell ill with leprosy the Christian
+priest from this place who had served in that black service so long; and
+then a fire leapt up in me.  Zaida was gone--I had brought food and a
+balass of water to her door those many times; there was naught to do,
+since she was gone--"
+
+Suddenly David took a step nearer to him and looked into the sullen and
+drooping eyes.  "Thou shalt go with me, Achmet.  I will do this unlawful
+act for thee.  At daybreak I will give thee orders.  Thou shalt join me
+far from here--if I go to the Soudan," he added, with a sudden
+remembrance of his position; and he turned away slowly.
+
+After a moment, with muttered words, Achmet sank down upon the stone
+again, drew a cake of dourha from his inner robe, and began to eat.
+
+The camel-boy had lighted a fire, and he sat beside it warming his hands
+at the blaze and still singing to himself:
+
+    "The bed of my love I will sprinkle with attar of roses,
+     The face of my love I will touch with the balm
+     With the balm of the tree from the farthermost wood,
+     From the wood without end, in the world without end.
+     My love holds the cup to my lips, and I drink of the cup,
+     And the attar of roses I sprinkle will soothe like the evening dew,
+     And the balm will be healing and sleep, and the cup I will drink,
+     I will drink of the cup my love holds to my lips--"
+
+David stood listening.  What power was there in desert life that could
+make this poor camel-driver, at the end of a long day of weariness and
+toil and little food and drink, sing a song of content and cheerfulness?
+The little needed, the little granted, and no thought beyond--save the
+vision of one who waited in the hut by the onion-field.  He gathered
+himself together and tuned his mind to the scene through which he had
+just passed, and then to the interview he would have with Kaid on the
+morrow.  A few hours ago he had seen no way out of it all--he had had no
+real hope that Kaid would turn to him again; but the last two hours had
+changed all that.  Hope was alive in him.  He had fought a desperate
+fight with himself, and he had conquered.  Then had come Achmet,
+unrepentant, degraded still, but with the spirit of Something glowing--
+Achmet to die for a cause, driven by that Something deep beneath the
+degradation and the crime.  He had hope, and, as the camel-driver's voice
+died away, and he lay down with a sheep-skin over him and went instantly
+to sleep, David drew to the fire and sat down beside it.  Presently Ebn
+Ezra came to urge him to go to bed, but he would not.  He had slept, he
+said; he had slept and rested, and the night was good--he would wait.
+Then the other brought rugs and blankets, and gave David some, and lay
+down beside the fire, and watched and waited for he knew not what.  Ever
+and ever his eyes were on David, and far back under the acacia-tree
+Achmet slept as he had not slept since his doom fell on him.
+
+At last Ebn Ezra Bey also slept; but David was awake with the night and
+the benevolent moon and the marching stars.  The spirit of the desert was
+on him, filling him with its voiceless music.  From the infinite
+stretches of sand to the south came the irresistible call of life, as
+soft as the leaves in a garden of roses, as deep as the sea.  This world
+was still, yet there seemed a low, delicate humming, as of multitudinous
+looms at a distance so great that the ear but faintly caught it--the
+sound of the weavers of life and destiny and eternal love, the hands of
+the toilers of all the ages spinning and spinning on; and he was part of
+it, not abashed or dismayed because he was but one of the illimitable
+throng.
+
+The hours wore on, but still he sat there, peace in all his heart, energy
+tingling softly through every vein, the wings of hope fluttering at his
+ear.
+
+At length the morning came, and, from the west, with the rising sun, came
+a traveller swiftly, making for where he was.  The sleepers stirred
+around him and waked and rose.  The little camp became alive.  As the
+traveller neared the fresh-made fire, David saw that it was Lacey.  He
+went eagerly to meet him.
+
+"Thee has news," he said.  "I see it is so."  He held Lacey's hand in
+his.
+
+"Say, you are going on that expedition, Saadat.  You wanted money.  Will
+a quarter of a million do?"  David's eyes caught fire.
+
+From the monastery there came the voices of the monks:
+
+     "O be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands.  Serve the Lord with
+     gladness, and come before His presence with a song."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+THE DARK INDENTURE
+
+Nahoum had forgotten one very important thing: that what affected David
+as a Christian in Egypt would tell equally against himself.  If, in his
+ill-health and dejection, Kaid drank deep of the cup of Mahomet, the red
+eyes of fanaticism would be turned upon the Armenian, as upon the
+European Christian.  He had forgotten it for the moment, but when, coming
+into Kaid's Palace, a little knot of loiterers spat upon the ground and
+snarled, "Infidel--Nazarene!" with contempt and hatred, the significance
+of the position came home to him.  He made his way to a far quarter of
+the Palace, thoughtfully weighing the circumstances, and was met by
+Mizraim.
+
+Mizraim salaamed.  "The height of thy renown be as the cedar of Lebanon,
+Excellency."
+
+"May thy feet tread the corn of everlasting fortune, son of Mahomet."
+
+They entered the room together.  Nahoum looked at Mizraim curiously.  He
+was not satisfied with what he saw.  Mizraim's impassive face had little
+expression, but the eyes were furtively eager and sinister.
+
+"Well, so it is, and if it is, what then?" asked Nahoum coolly.
+
+"Ki di, so it is," answered Mizraim, and a ghastly smile came to his
+lips.  This infidel pasha, Nahoum, had a mind that pierced to the meaning
+of words ere they were spoken.  Mizraim's hand touched his forehead, his
+breast, his lips, and, clasping and unclasping his long, snakelike
+fingers, he began the story he had come to tell.
+
+"The Inglesi, whom Allah confound, the Effendina hath blackened by a
+look, his words have smitten him in the vital parts--"
+
+"Mizraim, thou dove, speak to the purpose!"  Mizraim showed a dark
+pleasure at the interruption.  Nahoum was impatient, anxious; that made
+the tale better worth telling.
+
+"Sharif and the discontented ones who dare not act, like the vultures,
+they flee the living man, but swoop upon the corpse.  The consuls of
+those countries who love not England or Claridge Pasha, and the holy men,
+and the Cadi, all scatter smouldering fires.  There is a spirit in the
+Palace and beyond which is blowing fast to a great flame."
+
+"Then, so it is, great one, and what bodes it?"
+
+"It may kill the Inglesi; but it will also sweep thee from the fields of
+life where thou dost flourish."
+
+"It is not against the foreigner, but against the Christian, Mizraim?"
+
+"Thy tongue hath wisdom, Excellency."
+
+"Thou art a Muslim--"
+
+"Why do I warn thee?  For service done to me; and because there is none
+other worth serving in Egypt.  Behold, it is my destiny to rule others,
+to serve thee."
+
+"Once more thy turban full of gold, Mizraim, if thou dost service now
+that hath meaning and is not a belching of wind and words.  Thou hast a
+thing to say--say it, and see if Nahoum hath lost his wit, or hath a
+palsied arm."
+
+"Then behold, pasha.  Are not my spies in all the Palace?  Is not my
+scourge heavier than the whip of the horned horse?  Ki di, so it is.
+This I have found.  Sharif hath, with others, made a plot which hath
+enough powder in it to shake Egypt, and toss thee from thy high place
+into the depths.  There is a Christian--an Armenian, as it chances; but
+he was chosen because he was a Christian, and for that only.  His name is
+Rahib.  He is a tent-maker.  He had three sons.  They did kill an effendi
+who had cheated them of their land.  Two of them were hanged last week;
+the other, caught but a few days since, is to hang within three days.
+To-day Kaid goes to the Mosque of Mahmoud, as is the custom at this
+festival.  The old man hath been persuaded to attempt the life of Kaid,
+upon condition that his son--his Benjamin--is set free.  It will be but
+an attempt at Kaid's life, no more; but the cry will go forth that a
+Christian did the thing; and the Muslim flame will leap high."
+
+"And the tent-maker?" asked Nahoum musingly, though he was turning over
+the tale in his mind, seeing behind it and its far consequences.
+
+"Malaish, what does it matter!  But he is to escape, and they are to hang
+another Christian in his stead for the attempt on Kaid.  It hath no
+skill, but it would suffice.  With the dervishes gone malboos, and the
+faithful drunk with piety--canst thou not see the issue, pasha?  Blood
+will be shed."
+
+"The Jews of Europe would be angry," said Nahoum grimly but evenly.  "The
+loans have been many, and Kaid has given a lien by the new canal at Suez.
+The Jews will be angry," he repeated, "and for every drop of Christian
+blood shed there would be a lanced vein here.  But that would not bring
+back Nahoum Pasha," he continued cynically.  "Well, this is thy story,
+Mizraim; this is what they would do.  Now what hast thou done to stop
+their doing?"
+
+"Am I not a Muslim?  Shall I give Sharif to the Nile?"
+
+Nahoum smiled darkly.  "There is a simpler way.  Thy mind ever runs on
+the bowstring and the sword.  These are great, but there is a greater.
+It is the mocking finger.  At midnight, when Kaid goes to the Mosque
+Mahmoud, a finger will mock the plotters till they are buried in
+confusion.  Thou knowest the governor of the prisons--has he not need of
+something?  Hath he never sought favours of thee?"
+
+"Bismillah, but a week ago!"
+
+"Then, listen, thou shepherd of the sheep--"
+
+He paused, as there came a tap at the door, and a slave entered hurriedly
+and addressed Nahoum.  "The effendi, Ebn Ezra Bey, whom thou didst set me
+to watch, he hath entered the Palace, and asks for the Effendina."
+
+Nahoum started, and his face clouded, but his eyes flashed fire.  He
+tossed the slave a coin.  "Thou hast done well.  Where is he now?"
+
+"He waits in the hall, where is the statue of Mehemet Ali and the lions."
+
+"In an hour, Mizraim, thou shalt hear what I intend.  Peace be to thee!"
+
+"And on thee, peace!" answered Mizraim, as Nahoum passed from the room,
+and walked hastily towards the hall where he should find Ebn Ezra Bey.
+Nearing the spot, he brought his step to a deliberate slowness, and
+appeared not to notice the stately Arab till almost upon him.
+
+"Salaam, effendi," he said smoothly, yet with inquisition in his eye,
+with malice in his tone.
+
+"Salaam, Excellency."
+
+"Thou art come on the business of thy master?"
+
+"Who is my master, Excellency?"
+
+"Till yesterday it was Claridge Pasha.  Hast thou then forsaken him in
+his trouble--the rat from the sinking ship?"
+
+A flush passed over Ebn Ezra Bey's face, and his mouth opened with a gasp
+of anger.  Oriental though he was, he was not as astute as this Armenian
+Christian, who was purposely insulting him, that he might, in a moment of
+heat, snatch from him the business he meant to lay before Kaid.  Nahoum
+had not miscalculated.
+
+"I have but one master, Excellency," Ebn Ezra answered quietly at last,
+"and I have served him straightly.  Hast thou done likewise?"
+
+"What is straight to thee might well be crooked to me, effendi."
+
+"Thou art crooked as the finger of a paralytic."
+
+"Yet I have worked in peace with Claridge Pasha for these years past,
+even until yesterday, when thou didst leave him to his fate."
+
+"His ship will sail when thine is crumbling on the sands, and all thou
+art is like a forsaken cockatrice's nest."
+
+"Is it this thou hast come to say to the Effendina?"
+
+"What I have come to say to the Effendina is for the world to know after
+it hath reached his ears.  I know thee, Nahoum Pasha.  Thou art a
+traitor.  Claridge Pasha would abolish slavery, and thou dost receive
+great sums of gold from the slave-dealers to prevent it."
+
+"Is it this thou wilt tell Kaid?" Nahoum asked with a sneer.  "And hast
+thou proofs?"
+
+"Even this day they have come to my hands from the south."
+
+"Yet I think the proofs thou hast will not avail; and I think that thou
+wilt not show them to Kaid.  The gift of second thinking is a great gift.
+Thou must find greater reason for seeking the Effendina."
+
+"That too shall be.  Gold thou hadst to pay the wages of the soldiers of
+the south.  Thou didst keep the gold and order the slave-hunt; and the
+soldiers of the Effendina have been paid in human flesh and blood--ten
+thousand slaves since Claridge Pasha left the Soudan, and three thousand
+dead upon the desert sands, abandoned by those who hunted them when water
+grew scarce and food failed.  To-day shall see thy fall."
+
+At his first words Nahoum had felt a shock, from which his spirit reeled;
+but an inspiration came to him on the moment; and he listened with a
+saturnine coolness to the passionate words of the indignant figure
+towering above him.  When Ebn Ezra had finished, he replied quietly:
+
+"It is even as thou sayest, effendi.  The soldiers were paid in slaves
+got in the slave-hunt; and I have gold from the slave-dealers.  I needed
+it, for the hour is come when I must do more for Egypt than I have ever
+done."
+
+With a gesture of contempt Ebn Ezra made to leave, seeing an official of
+the Palace in the distance.  Nahoum stopped him.  "But, one moment ere
+thou dost thrust thy hand into the cockatrice's den.  Thou dost measure
+thyself against Nahoum?  In patience and with care have I trained myself
+for the battle.  The bulls of Bashan may roar, yet my feet are shod with
+safety.  Thou wouldst go to Kaid and tell him thy affrighted tale.  I
+tell thee, thou wilt not go.  Thou hast reason yet, though thy blood is
+hot.  Thou art to Claridge Pasha like a brother--as to his uncle before
+him, who furnished my father's palace with carpets.  The carpets still
+soften the fall of my feet in my father's palace, as they did soften the
+fall of my brother's feet, the feet of Foorgat Bey."
+
+He paused, looking at Ebn Ezra with quiet triumph, though his eyes had
+ever that smiling innocence which had won David in days gone by.  He was
+turning his words over on the tongue with a relish born of long waiting.
+
+"Come," he said presently--"come, and I will give thee reason why thou
+wilt not speak with Kaid to-day.  This way, effendi."
+
+He led the other into a little room hung about with rugs and tapestry,
+and, going to the wall, he touched a spring.  "One moment here, effendi,"
+he added quietly.  The room was as it had been since David last stood
+within it.
+
+"In this room, effendi," Nahoum said with cold deliberation, "Claridge
+Pasha killed my brother, Foorgat Bey."
+
+Ebn Ezra fell back as though he had been struck.  Swiftly Nahoum told him
+the whole truth--even to the picture of the brougham, and the rigid,
+upright figure passing through the night to Foorgat's palace, the gaunt
+Mizraim piloting the equipage of death.
+
+"I have held my peace for my own reasons, effendi.  Wilt thou then force
+me to speak?  If thou dost still cherish Claridge Pasha, wilt thou see
+him ruined?  Naught but ruin could follow the telling of the tale at this
+moment--his work, his life, all done.  The scandal, the law, vengeance!
+But as it is now, Kaid may turn to him again; his work may yet go on--he
+has had the luck of angels, and Kaid is fickle.  Who can tell?"
+
+Abashed and overwhelmed, Ebn Ezra Bey looked at him keenly.  "To tell of
+Foorgat Bey would ruin thee also," he said.  "That thou knowest.  The
+trick--would Kaid forgive it?  Claridge Pasha would not be ruined alone."
+
+"Be it so.  If thou goest to Kaid with thy story, I go to Egypt with
+mine.  Choose."
+
+Ebn Ezra turned to go.  "The high God judge between him and thee," he
+said, and, with bowed head, left the Palace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+NAHOUM DROPS THE MASK
+
+"CLARIDGE PASHA!"
+
+At the sound of the words, announced in a loud voice, hundreds of heads
+were turned towards the entrance of the vast salon, resplendent with
+gilded mirrors, great candelabra and chandeliers, golden hangings, and
+divans glowing with robes of yellow silk.
+
+It was the anniversary of Kaid's succession, and all entitled to come
+poured into the splendid chamber.  The showy livery of the officials, the
+loose, spacious, gorgeous uniforms of the officers, with the curved
+jewelled scimitars and white turbans, the rich silk robes of the Ulema,
+robe over robe of coloured silk with flowing sleeves and sumptuous silken
+vests, the ample dignity of noble-looking Arabs in immense white turbans,
+the dark straight Stambouli coat of the officials, made a picture of
+striking variety and colour and interest.
+
+About the centre of the room, laying palm to palm again and yet again,
+touching lips and forehead and breast, speaking with slow, leisurely,
+voices, were two Arab sheikhs from the far Soudan.  One of these showed a
+singular interest in the movements of Nahoum Pasha as he entered the
+chamber, and an even greater interest in David when he was announced; but
+as David, in his journey up the chamber, must pass near him, he drew
+behind a little group of officials, who whispered to each other excitedly
+as David came on.  More than once before this same Sheikh Abdullah had
+seen David, and once they had met, and had made a treaty of amity, and
+Abdullah had agreed to deal in slaves no more; and yet within three
+months had sent to Cairo two hundred of the best that could be found
+between Khartoum and Senaar.  His business, of which Ebn Ezra Bey had due
+knowledge, had now been with Nahoum.  The business of the other Arab, a
+noble-looking and wiry Bedouin from the South, had been with Ebn Ezra
+Bey, and each hid his business from his friend.  Abdullah murmured to
+himself as David passed--a murmur of admiration and astonishment.  He had
+heard of the disfavour in which the Inglesi was; but, as he looked at
+David's face with its quiet smile, the influence which he felt in the
+desert long ago came over him again.
+
+"By Allah," he said aloud abstractedly, "it is a face that will not hide
+when the khamsin blows!  Who shall gainsay it?  If he were not an infidel
+he would be a Mahdi."
+
+To this his Bedouin friend replied: "As the depths of the pool at Ghebel
+Farik, so are his eyes.  You shall dip deep and you shall not find the
+bottom.  Bismillah, I would fight Kaid's Nubians, but not this infidel
+pasha!"
+
+Never had David appeared to such advantage.  The victory over himself the
+night before, the message of hope that had reached him at the monastery
+in the desert, the coming of Lacey, had given him a certain quiet
+masterfulness not reassuring to his foes.
+
+As he entered the chamber but now, there flashed into his mind the scene
+six years ago when, an absolute stranger, he had stepped into this
+Eastern salon, and had heard his name called out to the great throng:
+"Claridge efendi!"
+
+He addressed no one, but he bowed to the group of foreign consuls-
+general, looking them steadily in the eyes.  He knew their devices and
+what had been going on of late, he was aware that his fall would mean a
+blow to British prestige, and the calmness of his gaze expressed a
+fortitude which had a disconcerting effect upon the group.  The British
+Consul-General stood near by.  David advanced to him, and, as he did so,
+the few who surrounded the Consul-General fell back.  David held out his
+hand.  Somewhat abashed and ill at ease, the Consul-General took it.
+
+"Have you good news from Downing Street?" asked David quietly.
+
+The Consul-General hesitated for an instant, and then said: "There is no
+help to be had for you or for what you are doing in that quarter."  He
+lowered his voice.  "I fear Lord Eglington does not favour you; and he
+controls the Foreign Minister.  I am very sorry.  I have done my best,
+but my colleagues, the other consuls, are busy--with Lord Eglington."
+
+David turned his head away for an instant.  Strange how that name sent a
+thrill through him, stirred his blood!  He did not answer the Consul-
+General, and the latter continued:
+
+"Is there any hope?  Is the breach with Kaid complete?"
+
+David smiled gravely.  "We shall see presently.  I have made no change in
+my plans on the basis of a breach."
+
+At that moment he caught sight of Nahoum some distance away and moved
+towards him.  Out of the corner of his eye Nahoum saw David coming, and
+edged away towards that point where Kaid would enter, and where the crowd
+was greater.  As he did so Kaid appeared.  A thrill went through the
+chamber.  Contrary to his custom, he was dressed in the old native
+military dress of Mehemet Ali.  At his side was a jewelled scimitar, and
+in his turban flashed a great diamond.  In his hand he carried a snuff-
+box, covered with brilliants, and on his breast were glittering orders.
+
+The eyes of the reactionaries flashed with sinister pleasure when they
+saw Kaid.  This outward display of Orientalism could only be a reflex of
+the mind.  It was the outer symbol of Kaid's return to the spirit of the
+old days, before the influence of the Inglesi came upon him.  Every
+corrupt and intriguing mind had a palpitation of excitement.
+
+In Nahoum the sight of Kaid produced mixed feelings.  If, indeed, this
+display meant reaction towards an entourage purely Arab, Egyptian, and
+Muslim, then it was no good omen for his Christian self.  He drew near,
+and placed himself where Kaid could see him.  Kaid's manner was cheerful,
+but his face showed the effect of suffering, physical and mental.
+Presently there entered behind him Sharif Bey, whose appearance was the
+signal for a fresh demonstration.  Now, indeed, there could be no doubt
+as to Kaid's reaction.  Yet if Sharif had seen Mizraim's face evilly
+gloating near by he would have been less confident.
+
+David was standing where Kaid must see him, but the Effendina gave no
+sign of recognition.  This was so significant that the enemies of David
+rejoiced anew.  The day of the Inglesi was over.  Again and again did
+Kaid's eye wander over David's head.
+
+David remained calm and watchful, neither avoiding nor yet seeking the
+circle in which Kaid moved.  The spirit with which he had entered the
+room, however, remained with him, even when he saw Kaid summon to him
+some of the most fanatical members of the court circle, and engage them
+in talk for a moment.  But as this attention grew more marked, a cloud
+slowly gathered in the far skies of his mind.
+
+There was one person in the great assembly, however, who seemed to be
+unduly confident.  It was an ample, perspiring person in evening dress,
+who now and again mopped a prematurely bald head, and who said to
+himself, as Kaid talked to the reactionaries:
+
+"Say, Kald's overdoing it.  He's putting potted chicken on the butter.
+But it's working all right-r-i-g-h-t.  It's worth the backsheesh!"
+
+At this moment Kaid fastened David with his look, and spoke in a tone so
+loud that people standing at some distance were startled.
+
+"Claridge Pasha!"
+
+In the hush that followed David stepped forward.  "May the bounty of the
+years be thine, Saadat," Kaid said in a tone none could misunderstand.
+
+"May no tree in thy orchard wither, Effendina," answered David in a firm
+voice.
+
+Kaid beckoned him near, and again he spoke loudly: "I have proved thee,
+and found thee as gold tried seven times by the fire, Saadat.  In the
+treasury of my heart shall I store thee up.  Thou art going to the Soudan
+to finish the work Mehemet Ali began.  I commend thee to Allah, and will
+bid thee farewell at sunrise--I and all who love Egypt."
+
+There was a sinister smile on his lips, as his eyes wandered over the
+faces of the foreign consuls-general.  The look he turned on the
+intriguers of the Palace was repellent; he reserved for Sharif a moody,
+threatening glance, and the desperate hakim shrank back confounded from
+it.  His first impulse was to flee from the Palace and from Cairo; but he
+bethought himself of the assault to be made on Kaid by the tent-maker, as
+he passed to the mosque a few hours later, and he determined to await the
+issue of that event.  Exchanging glances with confederates, he
+disappeared, as Kaid laid a hand on David's arm and drew him aside.
+
+After viewing the great throng cynically for a moment Kaid said: "To-
+morrow thou goest.  A month hence the hakim's knife will find the thing
+that eats away my life.  It may be they will destroy it and save me; if
+not, we shall meet no more."
+
+David looked into his eyes.  "Not in a month shall thy work be completed,
+Effendina.  Thou shalt live.  God and thy strong will shall make it so."
+
+A light stole over the superstitious face.  "No device or hatred, or
+plot, has prevailed against thee," Kaid said eagerly.  "Thou hast
+defeated all--even when I turned against thee in the black blood of
+despair.  Thou hast conquered me even as thou didst Harrik."
+
+"Thou dost live," returned David drily.  "Thou dost live for Egypt's
+sake, even as Harrik died for Egypt's sake, and as others shall die."
+
+"Death hath tracked thee down how often!  Yet with a wave of the hand
+thou hast blinded him, and his blow falls on the air.  Thou art beset by
+a thousand dangers, yet thou comest safe through all.  Thou art an honest
+man.  For that I besought thee to stay with me.  Never didst thou lie to
+me.  Good luck hath followed thee.  Kismet!  Stay with me, and it may be
+I shall be safe also.  This thought came to me in the night, and in the
+morning was my reward, for Lacey effendi came to me and said, even as I
+say now, that thou wilt bring me good luck; and even in that hour, by the
+mercy of God, a loan much needed was negotiated.  Allah be praised!"
+
+A glint of humour shot into David's eyes.  Lacey--a loan--he read it all!
+Lacey had eased the Prince Pasha's immediate and pressing financial
+needs--and, "Allah be praised!"  Poor human nature--backsheesh to a
+Prince regnant!
+
+"Effendina," he said presently, "thou didst speak of Harrik.  One there
+was who saved thee then--" "Zaida!"  A change passed over Kaid's face.
+"Speak!  Thou hast news of her?  She is gone?"  Briefly David told him
+how Zaida was found upon her sister's grave.  Kaid's face was turned away
+as he listened.
+
+"She spoke no word of me?" Kaid said at last.  "To whom should she
+speak?" David asked gently.  "But the amulet thou gavest her, set with
+one red jewel, it was clasped in her hand in death."
+
+Suddenly Kaid's anger blazed.  "Now shall Achmet die," he burst out.
+"His hands and feet shall be burnt off, and he shall be thrown to the
+vultures."
+
+"The Place of the Lepers is sacred even from thee, Effendina," answered
+David gravely.  "Yet Achmet shall die even as Harrik died.  He shall die
+for Egypt and for thee, Effendina."
+
+Swiftly he drew the picture of Achmet at the monastery in the desert.
+"I have done the unlawful thing, Effendina," he said at last, "but thou
+wilt make it lawful.  He hath died a thousand deaths--all save one."
+
+"Be it so," answered Kaid gloomily, after a moment; then his face lighted
+with cynical pleasure as he scanned once more the faces of the crowd
+before him.  At last his eyes fastened on Nahoum.  He turned to David.
+
+"Thou dost still desire Nahoum in his office?" he asked keenly.
+
+A troubled look came into David's eyes, then it cleared away, and he said
+firmly: "For six years we have worked together, Effendina.  I am surety
+for his loyalty to thee."
+
+"And his loyalty to thee?"
+
+A pained look crossed over David's face again, but he said with a will
+that fought all suspicion down: "The years bear witness."
+
+Kaid shrugged his shoulders slightly.  "The years have perjured
+themselves ere this.  Yet, as thou sayest, Nahoum is a Christian," he
+added, with irony scarcely veiled.
+
+Now he moved forward with David towards the waiting court.  David
+searched the groups of faces for Nahoum in vain.  There were things
+to be said to Nahoum before he left on the morrow, last suggestions
+to be given.  Nahoum could not be seen.
+
+Nahoum was gone, as were also Sharif and his confederates, and in the
+lofty Mosque of Mahmoud soft lights were hovering, while the Sheikh-el-
+Islam waited with Koran and scimitar for the ruler of Egypt to pray to
+God and salute the Lord Mahomet.
+
+At the great gateway in the Street of the Tent Makers Kaid paused on his
+way to the Mosque Mahmoud.  The Gate was studded with thousands of nails,
+which fastened to its massive timbers relics of the faithful, bits of
+silk and cloth, and hair and leather; and here from time immemorial a
+holy man had sat and prayed.  At the gateway Kaid salaamed humbly, and
+spoke to the holy man, who, as he passed, raised his voice shrilly in an
+appeal to Allah, commending Kaid to mercy and everlasting favour.  On
+every side eyes burned with religious zeal, and excited faces were turned
+towards the Effendina.  At a certain point there were little groups of
+men with faces more set than excited.  They had a look of suppressed
+expectancy.  Kald neared them, passed them, and, as he did so, they
+looked at each other in consternation.  They were Sharif's confederates,
+fanatics carefully chosen.  The attempt on Kaid's life should have been
+made opposite the spot where they stood.  They craned their necks in
+effort to find the Christian tent-maker, but in vain.
+
+Suddenly they heard a cry, a loud voice calling.  It was Rahib the tent-
+maker.  He was beside Kaid's stirrups, but no weapon was in his hand; and
+his voice was calling blessings down on the Effendina's head for having
+pardoned and saved from death his one remaining son, the joy of his old
+age.  In all the world there was no prince like Kaid, said the tent-
+maker; none so bountiful and merciful and beautiful in the eyes of men.
+God grant him everlasting days, the beloved friend of his people, just to
+all and greatly to be praised.
+
+As the soldiers drove the old man away with kindly insistence--for Kaid
+had thrown him a handful of gold--Mizraim, the Chief Eunuch, laughed
+wickedly.  As Nahoum had said, the greatest of all weapons was the
+mocking finger.  He and Mizraim had had their way with the governor of
+the prisons, and the murderer had gone in safety, while the father stayed
+to bless Kaid.  Rahib the tent-maker had fooled the plotters.  They were
+mad in derision.  They did not know that Kaid was as innocent as
+themselves of having pardoned the tent-maker's son.  Their moment had
+passed; they could not overtake it; the match had spluttered and gone out
+at the fuel laid for the fire of fanaticism.
+
+The morning of David's departure came.  While yet it was dark he had
+risen, and had made his last preparations.  When he came into the open
+air and mounted, it was not yet sunrise, and in that spectral early
+light, which is all Egypt's own, Cairo looked like some dream-city in a
+forgotten world.  The Mokattam Hills were like vast dun barriers guarding
+and shutting in the ghostly place, and, high above all, the minarets of
+the huge mosque upon the lofty rocks were impalpable fingers pointing an
+endless flight.  The very trees seemed so little real and substantial
+that they gave the eye the impression that they might rise and float
+away.  The Nile was hung with mist, a trailing cloud unwound from the
+breast of the Nile-mother.  At last the sun touched the minarets of the
+splendid mosque with shafts of light, and over at Ghizeh and Sakkarah the
+great pyramids, lifting their heads from the wall of rolling blue mist
+below, took the morning's crimson radiance with the dignity of four
+thousand years.
+
+On the decks of the little steamer which was to carry them south David,
+Ebn Ezra, Lacey, and Mahommed waited.  Presently Kaid came, accompanied
+by his faithful Nubians, their armour glowing in the first warm light of
+the rising sun, and crowds of people, who had suddenly emerged, ran
+shrilling to the waterside behind him.
+
+Kaid's pale face had all last night's friendliness, as he bade David
+farewell with great honour, and commended him to the care of Allah; and
+the swords of the Nubians clashed against their breasts and on their
+shields in salaam.
+
+But there was another farewell to make; and it was made as David's foot
+touched the deck of the steamer.  Once again David looked at Nahoum as he
+had done six years ago, in the little room where they had made their bond
+together.  There was the same straight look in Nahoum's eyes.  Was he not
+to be trusted?  Was it not his own duty to trust?  He clasped Nahoum's
+hand in farewell, and turned away.  But as he gave the signal to start,
+and the vessel began to move, Nahoum came back.  He leaned over the
+widening space and said in a low tone, as David again drew near:
+
+"There is still an account which should be settled, Saadat.  It has
+waited long; but God is with the patient.  There is the account of
+Foorgat Bey."
+
+The light fled from David's eyes and his heart stopped beating for a
+moment.  When his eyes saw the shore again Nahoum was gone with Kaid.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Cherish any alleviating lie
+Triumph of Oriental duplicity over Western civilisation
+When God permits, shall man despair?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WEAVERS
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+
+XXXV.     THE FLIGHT OF THE WOUNDED
+XXXVI.    "IS IT ALWAYS SO-IN LIFE?"
+XXXVII.   THE FLYING SHUTTLE
+XXXVIII.  JASPER KIMBER SPEAKS
+XXXIX.    FAITH JOURNEYS TO LONDON
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+THE FLIGHT OF THE WOUNDED
+
+              "And Mario can soothe with a tenor note
+               The souls in purgatory."
+
+"Non ti scordar di mi!"  The voice rang out with passionate stealthy
+sweetness, finding its way into far recesses of human feeling.  Women of
+perfect poise and with the confident look of luxury and social fame
+dropped their eyes abstractedly on the opera-glasses lying in their laps,
+or the programmes they mechanically fingered, and recalled, they knew not
+why--for what had it to do with this musical narration of a tragic
+Italian tale!--the days when, in the first flush of their wedded life,
+they had set a seal of devotion and loyalty and love upon their arms,
+which, long ago, had gone to the limbo of lost jewels, with the chaste,
+fresh desires of worshipping hearts.  Young egotists, supremely happy and
+defiant in the pride of the fact that they loved each other, and that it
+mattered little what the rest of the world enjoyed, suffered, and
+endured--these were suddenly arrested in their buoyant and solitary
+flight, and stirred restlessly in their seats.  Old men whose days of
+work were over; who no longer marshalled their legions, or moved at a nod
+great ships upon the waters in masterful manoeuvres; whose voices were
+heard no more in chambers of legislation, lashing partisan feeling to a
+height of cruelty or lulling a storm among rebellious followers; whose
+intellects no longer devised vast schemes of finance, or applied secrets
+of science to transform industry--these heard the enthralling cry of a
+soul with the darkness of eternal loss gathering upon it, and drew back
+within themselves; for they too had cried like this one time or another
+in their lives.  Stricken, they had cried out, and ambition had fled
+away, leaving behind only the habit of living, and of work and duty.
+
+As Hylda, in the Duchess of Snowdon's box, listened with a face which
+showed nothing of what she felt, and looking straight at the stage before
+her, the words of a poem she had learned but yesterday came to her mind,
+and wove themselves into the music thrilling from the voice in the stage
+prison:
+
+    "And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence
+       For the fulness of the days?  Have we withered or agonised?
+     Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue
+        thence?
+       Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?"
+
+"And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence?  Was it then so?
+The long weeks which had passed since that night at Hamley, when she had
+told Eglington the truth about so many things, had brought no peace,
+no understanding, no good news from anywhere.  The morning after she
+had spoken with heart laid bare.  Eglington had essayed to have a
+reconciliation; but he had come as the martyr, as one injured.  His
+egotism at such a time, joined to his attempt to make light of things,
+of treating what had happened as a mere "moment of exasperation," as "one
+of those episodes inseparable from the lives of the high-spirited," only
+made her heart sink and grow cold, almost as insensible as the flesh
+under a spray of ether.  He had been neither wise nor patient.  She had
+not slept after that bitter, terrible scene, and the morning had found
+her like one battered by winter seas, every nerve desperately alert to
+pain, yet tears swimming at her heart and ready to spring to her eyes at
+a touch of the real thing, the true note--and she knew so well what the
+true thing was!  Their great moment had passed, had left her withdrawn
+into herself, firmly, yet without heart, performing the daily duties of
+life, gay before the world, the delightful hostess, the necessary and
+graceful figure at so many functions.
+
+Even as Soolsby had done, who went no further than to tell Eglington his
+dark tale, and told no one else, withholding it from "Our Man"; as Sybil
+Lady Eglington had shrunk when she had been faced by her obvious duty, so
+Hylda hesitated, but from better reason than either.  To do right in the
+matter was to strike her husband--it must be a blow now, since her voice
+had failed.  To do right was to put in the ancient home and house of
+Eglington one whom he--with anger and without any apparent desire to have
+her altogether for himself, all the riches of her life and love--had
+dared to say commanded her sympathy and interest, not because he was a
+man dispossessed of his rights, but because he was a man possessed of
+that to which he had no right.  The insult had stung her, had driven her
+back into a reserve, out of which she seemed unable to emerge.  How could
+she compel Eglington to do right in this thing--do right by his own
+father's son?
+
+Meanwhile, that father's son was once more imperilling his life, once
+more putting England's prestige in the balance in the Soudan, from which
+he had already been delivered twice as though by miracles.  Since he had
+gone, months before, there had been little news; but there had been much
+public anxiety; and she knew only too well that there had been
+'pourparlers' with foreign ministers, from which no action came safe-
+guarding David.
+
+Many a human being has realised the apathy, the partial paralysis of the
+will, succeeding a great struggle, which has exhausted the vital forces.
+Many a general who has fought a desperate and victorious fight after a
+long campaign, and amid all the anxieties and miseries of war, has failed
+to follow up his advantage, from a sudden lesion of the power for action
+in him.  He has stepped from the iron routine of daily effort into a
+sudden freedom, and his faculties have failed him, the iron of his will
+has vanished.  So it was with Hylda.  She waited for she knew not what.
+Was it some dim hope that Eglington might see the right as she saw it?
+That he might realise how unreal was this life they were living,
+outwardly peaceful and understanding, deluding the world, but inwardly a
+place of tears.  How she dreaded the night and its recurrent tears, and
+the hours when she could not sleep, and waited for the joyless morning,
+as one lost on the moor, blanched with cold, waits for the sun-rise!
+Night after night at a certain hour--the hour when she went to bed at
+last after that poignant revelation to Eglington--she wept, as she had
+wept then, heart-broken tears of disappointment, disillusion, loneliness;
+tears for the bitter pity of it all; for the wasting and wasted
+opportunities; for the common aim never understood or planned together;
+for the precious hours lived in an air of artificial happiness and social
+excitement; for a perfect understanding missed; for the touch which no
+longer thrilled.
+
+But the end of it all must come.  She was looking frail and delicate, and
+her beauty, newly refined, and with a fresh charm, as of mystery or pain,
+was touched by feverishness.  An old impatience once hers was vanished,
+and Kate Heaver would have given a month's wages for one of those flashes
+of petulance of other days ever followed by a smile.  Now the smile was
+all too often there, the patient smile which comes to those who have
+suffered.  Hardness she felt at times, where Eglington was concerned,
+for he seemed to need her now not at all, to be self-contained, self-
+dependent--almost arrogantly so; but she did not show it, and she was
+outwardly patient.
+
+In his heart of hearts Eglington believed that she loved him, that her
+interest in David was only part of her idealistic temperament--the
+admiration of a woman for a man of altruistic aims; but his hatred of
+David, of what David was, and of his irrefutable claims, reacted on her.
+Perverseness and his unhealthy belief that he would master her in the
+end, that she would one day break down and come to him, willing to take
+his view in all things, and to be his slave--all this drove him farther
+and farther on a fatal, ever-broadening path.
+
+Success had spoiled him.  He applied his gifts in politics, daringly
+unscrupulous, superficially persuasive, intellectually insinuating, to
+his wife; and she, who had been captured once by all these things, was
+not to be captured again.  She knew what alone could capture her; and,
+as she sat and watched the singers on the stage now, the divine notes of
+that searching melody still lingering in her heart, there came a sudden
+wonder whether Eglington's heart could not be wakened.  She knew that it
+never had been, that he had never known love, the transfiguring and
+reclaiming passion.  No, no, surely it could not be too late--her
+marriage with him had only come too soon!  He had ridden over her without
+mercy; he had robbed her of her rightful share of the beautiful and the
+good; he had never loved her; but if love came to him, if he could but
+once realise how much there was of what he had missed!  If he did not
+save himself--and her--what would be the end?  She felt the cords drawing
+her elsewhere; the lure of a voice she had heard in an Egyptian garden
+was in her ears.  One night at Hamley, in an abandonment of grief-life
+hurt her so--she had remembered the prophecy she had once made that she
+would speak to David, and that he would hear; and she had risen from her
+seat, impelled by a strange new feeling, and had cried: "Speak!  speak to
+me!"  As plainly as she had ever heard anything in her life, she had
+heard his voice speak to her a message that sank into the innermost
+recesses of her being, and she had been more patient afterwards.  She had
+no doubt whatever; she had spoken to him, and he had answered; but the
+answer was one which all the world might have heard.
+
+Down deep in her nature was an inalienable loyalty, was a simple,
+old-fashioned feeling that "they two," she and Eglington, should cleave
+unto each other till death should part.  He had done much to shatter
+that feeling; but now, as she listened to Mario's voice, centuries of
+predisposition worked in her, and a great pity awoke in her heart.  Could
+she not save him, win him, wake him, cure him of the disease of Self?
+
+The thought brought a light to her eyes which had not been there for many
+a day.  Out of the deeps of her soul this mist of a pure selflessness
+rose, the spirit of that idealism which was the real chord of sympathy
+between her and Egypt.
+
+Yes, she would, this once again, try to win the heart of this man; and so
+reach what was deeper than heart, and so also give him that without which
+his life must be a failure in the end, as Sybil Eglington had said.  How
+often had those bitter anguished words of his mother rung in her ears--
+"So brilliant and unscrupulous, like yourself; but, oh, so sure of
+winning a great place in the world .  .  .  so calculating and determined
+and ambitious !"  They came to her now, flashed between the eager
+solicitous eyes of her mind and the scene of a perfect and everlasting
+reconciliation which it conjured up--flashed and were gone; for her will
+rose up and blurred them into mist; and other words of that true
+palimpsest of Sybil Eglington's broken life came instead: "And though he
+loves me little, as he loves you little too, yet he is my son, and for
+what he is we are both responsible one way or another."  As the mother,
+so the wife.  She said to herself now in sad paraphrase, "And though he
+loves me little, yet he is my husband, and for what he is it may be that
+I am in some sense responsible."  Yet he is my husband!  All that it was
+came to her; the closed door, the drawn blinds; the intimacy which shut
+them away from all the world; the things said which can only be said
+without desecration between two honest souls who love each other; and
+that sweet isolation which makes marriage a separate world, with its own
+sacred revelation.  This she had known; this had been; and though the
+image of the sacred thing had been defaced, yet the shrine was not
+destroyed.
+
+For she believed that each had kept the letter of the law; that, whatever
+his faults, he had turned his face to no other woman.  If she had not
+made his heart captive and drawn him by an ever-shortening cord of
+attraction, yet she was sure that none other had any influence over him,
+that, as he had looked at her in those short-lived days of his first
+devotion, he looked at no other.  The way was clear yet.  There was
+nothing irretrievable, nothing irrevocable, which would for ever stain
+the memory and tarnish the gold of life when the perfect love should be
+minted.  Whatever faults of mind or disposition or character were his--
+or hers--there were no sins against the pledges they had made, nor the
+bond into which they had entered.  Life would need no sponge.  Memory
+might still live on without a wound or a cowl of shame.
+
+It was all part of the music to which she listened, and she was almost
+oblivious of the brilliant throng, the crowded boxes, or of the Duchess
+of Snowdon sitting near her strangely still, now and again scanning the
+beautiful face beside her with a reflective look.  The Duchess loved the
+girl--she was but a girl, after all--as she had never loved any of her
+sex; it had come to be the last real interest of her life.  To her eyes,
+dimmed with much seeing, blurred by a garish kaleidoscope of fashionable
+life, there had come a look which was like the ghost of a look she had,
+how many decades ago.
+
+Presently, as she saw Hylda's eyes withdraw from the stage, and look at
+her with a strange, soft moisture and a new light in them, she laid her
+fan confidently on her friend's knee, and said in her abrupt whimsical
+voice: "You like it, my darling; your eyes are as big as saucers.  You
+look as if you'd been seeing things, not things on that silly stage, but
+what Verdi felt when he wrote the piece, or something of more account
+than that."
+
+"Yes, I've been seeing things," Hylda answered with a smile which came
+from a new-born purpose, the dream of an idealist.  "I've been seeing
+things that Verdi did not see, and of more account, too.  .  .  .
+Do you suppose the House is up yet?"
+
+A strange look flashed into the Duchess's eyes, which had been watching
+her with as much pity as interest.  Hylda had not been near the House of
+Commons this session, though she had read the reports with her usual
+care.  She had shunned the place.
+
+"Why, did you expect Eglington?" the Duchess asked idly, yet she was
+watchful too, alert for every movement in this life where the footsteps
+of happiness were falling by the edge of a precipice, over which she
+would not allow herself to look.  She knew that Hylda did not expect
+Eglington, for the decision to come to the opera was taken at the last
+moment.
+
+"Of course not--he doesn't know we are here.  But if it wasn't too late,
+I thought I'd go down and drive him home."
+
+The Duchess veiled her look.  Here was some new development in the
+history which had been torturing her old eyes, which had given her and
+Lord Windlehurst as many anxious moments as they had known in many a day,
+and had formed them into a vigilance committee of two, who waited for the
+critical hour when they should be needed.
+
+"We'll go at once if you like," she replied.  "The opera will be over
+soon.  We sent word to Windlehurst to join us, you remember, but he won't
+come now; it's too late.  So, we'll go, if you like."
+
+She half rose, but the door of the box opened, and Lord Windlehurst
+looked in quizzically.  There was a smile on his face.
+
+"I'm late, I know; but you'll forgive me--you'll forgive me, dear lady,"
+he added to Hylda, "for I've been listening to your husband making a
+smashing speech for a bad cause."
+
+Hylda smiled.  "Then I must go and congratulate him," she answered, and
+withdrew her hand from that of Lord Windlehurst, who seemed to hold it
+longer than usual, and pressed it in a fatherly way.
+
+"I'm afraid the House is up," he rejoined, as Hylda turned for her opera-
+cloak; "and I saw Eglington leave Palace Yard as I came away."  He gave a
+swift, ominous glance towards the Duchess, which Hylda caught, and she
+looked at each keenly.
+
+"It's seldom I sit in the Peers' Gallery," continued Windlehurst;
+"I don't like going back to the old place much.  It seems empty and
+hollow.  But I wouldn't have missed Eglington's fighting speech for a
+good deal."
+
+"What was it about?" asked Hylda as they left the box.  She had a sudden
+throb of the heart.  Was it the one great question, that which had been
+like a gulf of fire between them?
+
+"Oh, Turkey--the unpardonable Turk," answered Windlehurst.  "As good a
+defence of a bad case as I ever heard."
+
+"Yes, Eglington would do that well," said the Duchess enigmatically,
+drawing her cloak around her and adjusting her hair.  Hylda looked at her
+sharply, and Lord Windlehurst slyly, but the Duchess seemed oblivious of
+having said anything out of the way, and added: "It's a gift seeing all
+that can be said for a bad cause, and saying it, and so making the other
+side make their case so strong that the verdict has to be just."
+
+"Dear Duchess, it doesn't always work out that way," rejoined Windlehurst
+with a dry laugh.  "Sometimes the devil's advocate wins."
+
+"You are not very complimentary to my husband," retorted Hylda, looking
+him in the eyes, for she was not always sure when he was trying to baffle
+her.
+
+"I'm not so sure of that.  He hasn't won his case yet.  He has only
+staved off the great attack.  It's coming--soon."
+
+"What is the great attack?  What has the Government, or the Foreign
+Office, done or left undone?"  "Well, my dear--" Suddenly Lord
+Windlehurst remembered himself, stopped, put up his eyeglass, and with
+great interest seemed to watch a gay group of people opposite; for the
+subject of attack was Egypt and the Government's conduct in not helping
+David, in view not alone of his present danger, but of the position of
+England in the country, on which depended the security of her highway to
+the East.  Windlehurst was a good actor, and he had broken off his words
+as though the group he was now watching had suddenly claimed his
+attention.  "Well, well, Duchess," he said reflectively, "I see a new
+nine days' wonder yonder."  Then, in response to a reminder from Hylda,
+he continued: "Ah, yes, the attack!  Oh, Persia--Persia, and our feeble
+diplomacy, my dear lady, though you mustn't take that as my opinion,
+opponent as I am.  That's the charge, Persia--and her cats."
+
+The Duchess breathed a sigh of relief; for she knew what Windlehurst had
+been going to say, and she shrank from seeing what she felt she would
+see, if Egypt and Claridge Pasha's name were mentioned.  That night at
+Harnley had burnt a thought into her mind which she did not like.  Not
+that she had any pity for Eglington; her thought was all for this girl
+she loved.  No happiness lay in the land of Egypt for her, whatever her
+unhappiness here; and she knew that Hylda must be more unhappy still
+before she was ever happy again, if that might be.  There was that
+concerning Eglington which Hylda did not know, yet which she must know
+one day--and then!  But why were Hylda's eyes so much brighter and softer
+and deeper to-night?  There was something expectant, hopeful, brooding in
+them.  They belonged not to the life moving round her, but were shining
+in a land of their own, a land of promise.  By an instinct in each of
+them they stood listening for a moment to the last strains of the opera.
+The light leaped higher in Hylda's eyes.
+
+"Beautiful--oh, so beautiful!" she said, her hand touching the Duchess's
+arm.
+
+The Duchess gave the slim warm fingers a spasmodic little squeeze.  "Yes,
+darling, beautiful," she rejoined; and then the crowd began to pour out
+behind them.
+
+Their carriages were at the door.  Lord Windlehurst put Hylda in.  "The
+House is up," he said.  "You are going on somewhere?"
+
+"No--home," she said, and smiled into his old, kind, questioning eyes.
+"Home!"
+
+"Home!" he murmured significantly as he turned towards the Duchess and
+her carriage.  "Home!" he repeated, and shook his head sadly.
+
+"Shall I drive you to your house?" the Duchess asked.
+
+"No, I'll go with you to your door, and walk back to my cell.  Home!" he
+growled to the footman, with a sardonic note in the voice.
+
+As they drove away, the Duchess turned to him abruptly.  "What did you
+mean by your look when you said you had seen Eglington drive away from
+the House?"
+
+"Well, my dear Betty, she--the fly-away--drives him home now.  It has
+come to that."
+
+"To her house--Windlehurst, oh, Windlehurst!"
+
+She sank back in the cushions, and gave what was as near a sob as she had
+given in many a day.  Windlehurst took her hand.  "No, not so bad as that
+yet.  She drove him to his club.  Don't fret, my dear Betty."
+
+Home!  Hylda watched the shops, the houses, the squares, as she passed
+westward, her mind dwelling almost happily on the new determination to
+which she had come.  It was not love that was moving her, not love for
+him, but a deeper thing.  He had brutally killed love--the full life of
+it--those months ago; but there was a deep thing working in her which was
+as near nobility as the human mind can feel.  Not in a long time had she
+neared her home with such expectation and longing.  Often on the doorstep
+she had shut her eyes to the light and warmth and elegance of it, because
+of that which she did not see.  Now, with a thrill of pleasure, she saw
+its doors open.  It was possible Eglington might have come home already.
+Lord Windlehurst had said that he had left the House.  She did not ask if
+he was in--it had not been her custom for a long time--and servants were
+curious people; but she looked at the hall-table.  Yes, there was a hat
+which had evidently just been placed there, and gloves, and a stick.  He
+was at home, then.
+
+She hurried to her room, dropped her opera-cloak on a chair, looked at
+herself in the glass, a little fluttered and critical, and then crossed
+the hallway to Eglington's bedroom.  She listened for a moment.  There
+was no sound.  She turned the handle of the door softly, and opened it.
+A light was burning low, but the room was empty.  It was as she thought,
+he was in his study, where he spent hours sometimes after he came home,
+reading official papers.  She went up the stairs, at first swiftly, then
+more slowly, then with almost lagging feet.  Why did she hesitate?  Why
+should a woman falter in going to her husband--to her own one man of all
+the world?  Was it not, should it not be, ever the open door between
+them?  Confidence--confidence--could she not have it, could she not get
+it now at last?  She had paused; but now she moved on with quicker step,
+purpose in her face, her eyes softly lighted.
+
+Suddenly she saw on the floor an opened letter.  She picked it up, and,
+as she did so, involuntarily observed the writing.  Almost mechanically
+she glanced at the contents.  Her heart stood still.  The first words
+scorched her eyes.
+
+     "Eglington--Harry, dearest," it said, "you shall not go to sleep
+     to-night without a word from me.  This will make you think of me
+     when .  .  .  "
+
+Frozen, struck as by a mortal blow, Hylda looked at the signature.  She
+knew it--the cleverest, the most beautiful adventuress which the
+aristocracy and society had produced.  She trembled from head to foot,
+and for a moment it seemed that she must fall.  But she steadied herself
+and walked firmly to Eglington's door.  Turning the handle softly, she
+stepped inside.
+
+He did not hear her.  He was leaning over a box of papers, and they
+rustled loudly under his hand.  He was humming to himself that song she
+heard an hour ago in Il Trovatore, that song of passion and love and
+tragedy.  It sent a wave of fresh feeling over her.  She could not go
+on--could not face him, and say what she must say.  She turned and passed
+swiftly from the room, leaving the door open, and hurried down the
+staircase.  Eglington heard now, and wheeled round.  He saw the open
+door, listened to the rustle of her skirts, knew that she had been there.
+He smiled, and said to himself:
+
+"She came to me, as I said she would.  I shall master her--the full
+surrender, and then--life will be easy then."
+
+Hylda hurried down the staircase to her room, saw Kate Heaver waiting,
+beckoned to her, caught up her opera-cloak, and together they passed down
+the staircase to the front door.  Heaver rang a bell, a footman appeared,
+and, at a word, called a cab.  A minute later they were ready:
+
+"Snowdon House," Hylda said; and they passed into the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+"IS IT ALWAYS SO--IN LIFE?"
+
+The Duchess and her brother, an ex-diplomatist, now deaf and patiently
+amiable and garrulous, had met on the doorstep of Snowdon House, and
+together they insisted on Lord Windlehurst coming in for a talk.  The two
+men had not met for a long time, and the retired official had been one of
+Lord Windlehurst's own best appointments in other days.  The Duchess had
+the carriage wait in consequence.
+
+The ex-official could hear little, but he had cultivated the habit of
+talking constantly and well.  There were some voices, however, which he
+could hear more distinctly than others, and Lord Windlehurst's was one of
+them--clear, well-modulated, and penetrating.  Sipping brandy and water,
+Lord Windlehurst gave his latest quip.  They were all laughing heartily,
+when the butler entered the room and said, "Lady Eglington is here, and
+wishes to see your Grace."
+
+As the butler left the room, the Duchess turned despairingly to
+Windlehurst, who had risen, and was paler than the Duchess.  "It has
+come," she said, "oh, it has come!  I can't face it."
+
+"But it doesn't matter about you facing it," Lord Windlehurst rejoined.
+"Go to her and help her, Betty.  You know what to do--the one thing."
+He took her hand and pressed it.
+
+She dashed the tears from her eyes and drew herself together, while her
+brother watched her benevolently.
+
+He had not heard what was said.  Betty had always been impulsive, he
+thought to himself, and here was some one in trouble--they all came to
+her, and kept her poor.
+
+"Go to bed, Dick," the Duchess said to him, and hurried from the room.
+She did not hesitate now.  Windlehurst had put the matter in the right
+way.  Her pain was nothing, mere moral cowardice; but Hylda--!
+
+She entered the other room as quickly as rheumatic limbs would permit.
+Hylda stood waiting, erect, her eyes gazing blankly before her and rimmed
+by dark circles, her face haggard and despairing.
+
+Before the Duchess could reach her, she said in a hoarse whisper: "I have
+left him--I have left him.  I have come to you."
+
+With a cry of pity the Duchess would have taken the stricken girl in her
+arms, but Hylda held out a shaking hand with the letter in it which had
+brought this new woe and this crisis foreseen by Lord Windlehurst.
+"There--there it is.  He goes from me to her--to that!"  She thrust the
+letter into the Duchess's fingers.  "You knew--you knew!  I saw the look
+that passed between you and Windlehurst at the opera.  I understand all
+now.  He left the House of Commons with her--and you knew, oh, you knew!
+All the world knows--every one knew but me."  She threw up her hands.
+"But I've left him--I've left him, for ever."
+
+Now the Duchess had her in her arms, and almost forcibly drew her to a
+sofa.  "Darling, my darling," she said, "you must not give way.  It is
+not so bad as you think.  You must let me help to make you understand."
+
+Hylda laughed hysterically.  "Not so bad as I think!  Read--read it,"
+she said, taking the letter from the Duchess's fingers and holding it
+before her face.  "I found it on the staircase.  I could not help but
+read it."  She sat and clasped and unclasped her hands in utter misery.
+"Oh, the shame of it, the bitter shame of it!  Have I not been a good
+wife to him?  Have I not had reason to break my heart?  But I waited,
+and I wanted to be good and to do right.  And to-night I was going to try
+once more--I felt it in the opera.  I was going to make one last effort
+for his sake.  It was for his sake I meant to make it, for I thought him
+only hard and selfish, and that he had never loved; and if he only loved,
+I thought--"
+
+She broke off, wringing her hands and staring into space, the ghost of
+the beautiful figure that had left the Opera House with shining eyes.
+
+The Duchess caught the cold hands.  "Yes, yes, darling, I know.  I
+understand.  So does Windlehurst.  He loves you as much as I do.  We know
+there isn't much to be got out of life; but we always hoped you would get
+more than anybody else."
+
+Hylda shrank, then raised her head, and looked at the Duchess with an
+infinite pathos.  "Oh, is it always so--in life?  Is no one true?  Is
+every one betrayed sometime?  I would die--yes, a thousand times yes, I
+would rather die than bear this.  What do I care for life--it has cheated
+me!  I meant well, and I tried to do well, and I was true to him in word
+and deed even when I suffered most, even when--"
+
+The Duchess laid a cheek against the burning head.  "I understand, my own
+dear.  I understand--altogether."
+
+"But you cannot know," the broken girl replied; "but through everything I
+was true; and I have been tempted too when my heart was aching so, when
+the days were so empty, the nights so long, and my heart hurt--hurt me.
+But now, it is over, everything is done.  You will keep me here--ah, say
+you will keep me here till everything can be settled, and I can go away
+--far away--far--!"
+
+She stopped with a gasping cry, and her eyes suddenly strained into the
+distance, as though a vision of some mysterious thing hung before her.
+The Duchess realised that that temptation, which has come to so many
+disillusioned mortals, to end it all, to find quiet somehow, somewhere
+out in the dark, was upon her.  She became resourceful and persuasively
+commanding.
+
+"But no, my darling," she said, "you are going nowhere.  Here in London
+is your place now.  And you must not stay here in my house.  You must go
+back to your home.  Your place is there.  For the present, at any rate,
+there must be no scandal.  Suspicion is nothing, talk is nothing, and the
+world forgets--"
+
+"Oh, I do not care for the world or its forgetting!" the wounded girl
+replied.  "What is the world to me!  I wanted my own world, the world of
+my four walls, quiet and happy, and free from scandal and shame.  I
+wanted love and peace there, and now .  .  .  !"
+
+"You must be guided by those who love you.  You are too young to decide
+what is best for yourself.  You must let Windlehurst and me think for
+you; and, oh, my darling, you cannot know how much I care for your best
+good!"
+
+"I cannot, will not, bear the humiliation and the shame.  This letter
+here--you see!"
+
+"It is the letter of a woman who has had more affaires than any man in
+London.  She is preternaturally clever, my dear--Windlehurst would tell
+you so.  The brilliant and unscrupulous, the beautiful and the bad, have
+a great advantage in this world.  Eglington was curious, that is all.
+It is in the breed of the Eglingtons to go exploring, to experiment."
+
+Hylda started.  Words from the letter Sybil Lady Eglington had left
+behind her rushed into her mind: "Experiment, subterfuge, secrecy.
+'Reaping where you had not sowed, and gathering where you had not
+strawed.' Always experiment, experiment, experiment!"
+
+"I have only been married three years," she moaned.  "Yes, yes, my
+darling; but much may happen after three days of married life, and love
+may come after twenty years.  The human heart is a strange thing."
+
+"I was patient--I gave him every chance.  He has been false and
+shameless.  I will not go on."
+
+The Duchess pressed both hands hard, and made a last effort, looking into
+the deep troubled eyes with her own grown almost beautiful with feeling
+--the faded world-worn eyes.
+
+"You will go back to-night-at once," she said firmly.  "To-morrow you
+will stay in bed till noon-at any rate, till I come.  I promise you that
+you shall not be treated with further indignity.  Your friends will stand
+by you, the world will be with you, if you do nothing rash, nothing that
+forces it to babble and scold.  But you must play its game, my dearest.
+I'll swear that the worst has not happened.  She drove him to his club,
+and, after a man has had a triumph, a woman will not drive him to his
+club if--my darling, you must trust me!  If there must be the great
+smash, let it be done in a way that will prevent you being smashed also
+in the world's eyes.  You can live, and you will live.  Is there nothing
+for you to do?  Is there no one for whom you would do something, who
+would be heart-broken if you--if you went mad now?"
+
+Suddenly a great change passed over Hylda.  "Is there no one for whom you
+would do something?"  Just as in the desert a question like this had
+lifted a man out of a terrible and destroying apathy, so this searching
+appeal roused in Hylda a memory and a pledge.  "Is there no one for whom
+you would do something?"  Was life, then, all over?  Was her own great
+grief all?  Was her bitter shame the end?
+
+She got to her feet tremblingly.  "I will go back," she said slowly and
+softly.
+
+"Windlehurst will take you home," the Duchess rejoined eagerly.  "My
+carriage is at the door."
+
+A moment afterwards Lord Windlehurst took Hylda's hands in his and held
+them long.  His old, querulous eyes were like lamps of safety; his smile
+had now none of that cynicism with which he had aroused and chastened the
+world.  The pitiful understanding of life was there and a consummate
+gentleness.  He gave her his arm, and they stepped out into the moonlit
+night.  "So peaceful, so bright!" he said, looking round.
+
+"I will come at noon to-morrow," called the Duchess from the doorway.
+
+A light was still shining in Eglington's study when the carriage drove
+up.  With a latch-key Hylda admitted herself and her maid.
+
+The storm had broken, the flood had come.  The storm was over, but the
+flood swept far and wide.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+THE FLYING SHUTTLE
+
+Hour after hour of sleeplessness.  The silver-tongued clock remorselessly
+tinkled the quarters, and Hylda lay and waited for them with a hopeless
+strained attention.  In vain she tried devices to produce that monotony
+of thought which sometimes brings sleep.  Again and again, as she felt
+that sleep was coming at last, the thought of the letter she had found
+flashed through her mind with words of fire, and it seemed as if there
+had been poured through every vein a subtle irritant.  Just such a
+surging, thrilling flood she had felt in the surgeon's chair when she was
+a girl and an anesthetic had been given.  But this wave of sensation led
+to no oblivion, no last soothing intoxication.  Its current beat against
+her heart until she could have cried out from the mere physical pain, the
+clamping grip of her trouble.  She withered and grew cold under the
+torture of it all--the ruthless spoliation of everything which made life
+worth while or the past endurable.
+
+About an hour after she had gone to bed she heard Eglington's step.  It
+paused at her door.  She trembled with apprehension lest he should enter.
+It was many a day since he had done so, but also she had not heard his
+step pause at her door for many a day.  She could not bear to face it all
+now; she must have time to think, to plan her course--the last course of
+all.  For she knew that the next step must be the last step in her old
+life, and towards a new life, whatever that might be.  A great sigh of
+relief broke from her as she heard his door open and shut, and silence
+fell on everything, that palpable silence which seems to press upon the
+night-watcher with merciless, smothering weight.
+
+How terribly active her brain was!  Pictures--it was all vivid pictures,
+that awful visualisation of sorrow which, if it continues, breaks the
+heart or wrests the mind from its sanity.  If only she did not see!  But
+she did see Eglington and the Woman together, saw him look into her eyes,
+take her hands, put his arm round her, draw her face to his!  Her heart
+seemed as if it must burst, her lips cried out.  With a great effort of
+the will she tried to hide from these agonies of the imagination, and
+again she would approach those happy confines of sleep, which are the
+only refuge to the lacerated heart; and then the weapon of time on the
+mantelpiece would clash on the shield of the past, and she was wide awake
+again.  At last, in desperation, she got out of bed, hurried to the
+fireplace, caught the little sharp-tongued recorder in a nervous grasp,
+and stopped it.
+
+As she was about to get into bed again, she saw a pile of letters lying
+on the table near her pillow.  In her agitation she had not noticed them,
+and the devoted Heaver had not drawn her attention to them.  Now,
+however, with a strange premonition, she quickly glanced at the
+envelopes.  The last one of all was less aristocratic-looking than the
+others; the paper of the envelope was of the poorest, and it had a
+foreign look.  She caught it up with an exclamation.  The handwriting was
+that of her cousin Lacey.
+
+She got into bed with a mind suddenly swept into a new atmosphere, and
+opened the flimsy cover.  Shutting her eyes, she lay still for a moment
+--still and vague; she was only conscious of one thing, that a curtain
+had dropped on the terrible pictures she had seen, and that her mind was
+in a comforting quiet.  Presently she roused herself, and turned the
+letter over in her hand.  It was not long--was that because its news was
+bad news?  The first chronicles of disaster were usually brief!  She
+smoothed the paper out-it had been crumpled and was a little soiled-and
+read it swiftly.  It ran:
+
+     DEAR LADY COUSIN--As the poet says, "Man is born to trouble as the
+     sparks fly upward," and in Egypt the sparks set the stacks on fire
+     oftener than anywhere else, I guess.  She outclasses Mexico as a
+     "precious example" in this respect.  You needn't go looking for
+     trouble in Mexico; it's waiting for you kindly.  If it doesn't find
+     you to-day, well, manana.  But here it comes running like a native
+     to his cooking-pot at sunset in Ramadan.  Well, there have been
+     "hard trials" for the Saadat.  His cotton-mills were set on fire-
+     can't you guess who did it?  And now, down in Cairo, Nahoum runs
+     Egypt; for a messenger that got through the tribes worrying us tells
+     us that Kaid is sick, and Nahoum the Armenian says, you shall, and
+     you shan't, now.  Which is another way of saying, that between us
+     and the front door of our happy homes there are rattlesnakes that
+     can sting--Nahoum's arm is long, and his traitors are crawling under
+     the canvas of our tents!
+
+     I'm not complaining for myself.  I asked for what I've got, and,
+     dear Lady Cousin, I put up some cash for it, too, as a man should.
+     No, I don't mind for myself, fond as I am of loafing, sort of
+     pottering round where the streets are in the hands of a pure police;
+     for I've seen more, done more, thought more, up here, than in all my
+     life before; and I've felt a country heaving under the touch of one
+     of God's men--it gives you minutes that lift you out of the dust and
+     away from the crawlers.  And I'd do it all over a thousand times for
+     him, and for what I've got out of it.  I've lived.  But, to speak
+     right out plain, I don't know how long this machine will run.
+     There's been a plant of the worst kind.  Tribes we left friendly
+     under a year ago are out against us; cities that were faithful have
+     gone under to rebels.  Nahoum has sowed the land with the tale that
+     the Saadat means to abolish slavery, to take away the powers of the
+     great sheikhs, and to hand the country over to the Turk.  Ebn Ezra
+     Bey has proofs of the whole thing, and now at last the Saadat knows
+     too late that his work has been spoiled by the only man who could
+     spoil it.  The Saadat knows it, but does he rave and tear his hair?
+     He says nothing.  He stands up like a rock before the riot of
+     treachery and bad luck and all the terrible burden he has to carry
+     here.  If he wasn't a Quaker I'd say he had the pride of an
+     archangel.  You can bend him, but you can't break him; and it takes
+     a lot to bend him.  Men desert, but he says others will come to take
+     their place.  And so they do.  It's wonderful, in spite of the holy
+     war that's being preached, and all the lies about him sprinkled over
+     this part of Africa, how they all fear him, and find it hard to be
+     out on the war-path against him.  We should be gorging the vultures
+     if he wasn't the wonder he is.  We need boats.  Does he sit down and
+     wring his hands?  No, he organises, and builds them--out of scraps.
+     Hasn't he enough food for a long siege?  He goes himself to the
+     tribes that have stored food in their cities, and haven't yet
+     declared against him, and he puts a hand on their hard hearts, and
+     takes the sulkiness out of their eyes, and a fleet of ghiassas comes
+     down to us loaded with dourha.  The defences of this place are
+     nothing.  Does he fold his hands like a man of peace that he is,
+     and say, 'Thy will be done'?  Not the Saadat.  He gets two soldier-
+     engineers, one an Italian who murdered his wife in Italy twenty
+     years ago, and one a British officer that cheated at cards and had
+     to go, and we've got defences that'll take some negotiating.  That's
+     the kind of man he is; smiling to cheer others when their hearts are
+     in their boots, stern like a commander-in-chief when he's got to
+     punish, and then he does it like steel; but I've seen him afterwards
+     in his tent with a face that looks sixty, and he's got to travel a
+     while yet before he's forty.  None of us dares be as afraid as we
+     could be, because a look at him would make us so ashamed we'd have
+     to commit suicide.  He hopes when no one else would ever hope.  The
+     other day I went to his tent to wait for him, and I saw his Bible
+     open on the table.  A passage was marked.  It was this:
+
+     "Behold, I have taken out of thy hand the cup of trembling, even the
+     dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again: "But
+     I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee; which have
+     said to thy soul, Bow down, that we may go over; and thou hast laid
+     thy body as the ground, and as the street, to them that went over.
+
+     I'd like to see Nahoum with that cup of trembling in his hand, and
+     I've got an idea, too, that it will be there yet.  I don't know how
+     it is, but I never can believe the worst will happen to the Saadat.
+     Reading those verses put hope into me.  That's why I'm writing to
+     you, on the chance of this getting through by a native who is
+     stealing down the river with a letter from the Saadat to Nahoum, and
+     one to Kaid, and one to the Foreign Minister in London, and one to
+     your husband.  If they reach the hands they're meant for, it may be
+     we shall pan out here yet.  But there must be display of power; an
+     army must be sent, without delay, to show the traitors that the game
+     is up.  Five thousand men from Cairo under a good general would do
+     it.  Will Nahoum send them?  Does Kaid, the sick man, know?  I'm not
+     banking on Kaid.  I think he's on his last legs.  Unless pressure is
+     put on him, unless some one takes him by the throat and says: If you
+     don't relieve Claridge Pasha and the people with him, you will go to
+     the crocodiles, Nahoum won't stir.  So, I am writing to you.
+     England can do it.  The lord, your husband, can do it.  England will
+     have a nasty stain on her flag if she sees this man go down without
+     a hand lifted to save him.  He is worth another Alma to her
+     prestige.  She can't afford to see him slaughtered here, where he's
+     fighting the fight of civilisation.  You see right through this
+     thing, I know, and I don't need to palaver any more about it.  It
+     doesn't matter about me.  I've had a lot for my money, and I'm no
+     use--or I wouldn't be, if anything happened to the Saadat.  No one
+     would drop a knife and fork at the breakfast-table when my obit was
+     read out--well, yes, there's one, cute as she can be, but she's lost
+     two husbands already, and you can't be hurt so bad twice in the same
+     place.  But the Saadat, back him, Hylda--I'll call you that at this
+     distance.  Make Nahoum move.  Send four or five thousand men before
+     the day comes when famine does its work and they draw the bowstring
+     tight.
+
+     Salaam and salaam, and the post is going out, and there's nothing in
+     the morning paper; and, as Aunt Melissa used to say: "Well, so much
+     for so much!"  One thing I forgot.  I'm lucky to be writing to you
+     at all.  If the Saadat was an old-fashioned overlord, I shouldn't be
+     here.  I got into a bad corner three days ago with a dozen Arabs--
+     I'd been doing a little work with a friendly tribe all on my own,
+     and I almost got caught by this loose lot of fanatics.  I shot
+     three, and galloped for it.  I knew the way through the mines
+     outside, and just escaped by the skin of my teeth.  Did the Saadat,
+     as a matter of discipline, have me shot for cowardice?  Cousin
+     Hylda, my heart was in my mouth as I heard them yelling behind me--
+     and I never enjoyed a dinner so much in my life.  Would the Saadat
+     have run from them?  Say, he'd have stayed and saved his life too.
+     Well, give my love to the girls!
+
+                    Your affectionate cousin,
+
+                                        Tom LACEY.
+
+     P.S.-There's no use writing to me.  The letter service is bad.  Send
+     a few thousand men by military parcel-post, prepaid, with some red
+     seals--majors and colonels from Aldershot will do.  They'll give the
+     step to the Gyppies.  T.
+
+
+Hylda closed her eyes.  A fever had passed from her veins.  Here lay her
+duty before her--the redemption of the pledge she had made.  Whatever her
+own sorrow, there was work before her; a supreme effort must be made for
+another.  Even now it might be too late.  She must have strength for what
+she meant to do.  She put the room in darkness, and resolutely banished
+thought from her mind.
+
+The sun had been up for hours before she waked.  Eglington had gone to
+the Foreign Office.  The morning papers were full of sensational reports
+concerning Claridge Pasha and the Soudan.  A Times leader sternly
+admonished the Government.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+JASPER KIMBER SPEAKS
+
+That day the adjournment of the House of Commons was moved "To call
+attention to an urgent matter of public importance"--the position of
+Claridge Pasha in the Soudan.  Flushed with the success of last night's
+performance, stung by the attacks of the Opposition morning papers,
+confident in the big majority behind, which had cheered him a few hours
+before, viciously resenting the letter he had received from David that
+morning, Eglington returned such replies to the questions put to him that
+a fire of angry mutterings came from the forces against him.  He might
+have softened the growing resentment by a change of manner, but his
+intellectual arrogance had control of him for the moment; and he said to
+himself that he had mastered the House before, and he would do so now.
+Apart from his deadly antipathy to his half-brother, and the gain to
+himself--to his credit, the latter weighed with him not so much, so set
+was he on a stubborn course--if David disappeared for ever, there was at
+bottom a spirit of anti-expansion, of reaction against England's world-
+wide responsibilities.  He had no largeness of heart or view concerning
+humanity.  He had no inherent greatness, no breadth of policy.  With
+less responsibility taken, there would be less trouble, national and
+international--that was his point of view; that had been his view long
+ago at the meeting at Heddington; and his weak chief had taken it,
+knowing nothing of the personal elements behind.
+
+The disconcerting factor in the present bitter questioning in the House
+was, that it originated on his own side.  It was Jasper Kimber who had
+launched the questions, who moved the motion for adjournment.  Jasper had
+had a letter from Kate Heaver that morning early, which sent him to her,
+and he had gone to the House to do what he thought to be his duty.  He
+did it boldly, to the joy of the Opposition, and with a somewhat sullen
+support from many on his own side.  Now appeared Jasper's own inner
+disdain of the man who had turned his coat for office.  It gave a lead to
+a latent feeling among members of the ministerial party, of distrust, and
+of suspicion that they were the dupes of a mind of abnormal cleverness
+which, at bottom, despised them.
+
+With flashing eyes and set lips, vigilant and resourceful, Eglington
+listened to Jasper Kimber's opening remarks.
+
+By unremitting industry Jasper had made a place for himself in the House.
+The humour and vitality of his speeches, and his convincing advocacy of
+the cause of the "factory folk," had gained him a hearing.  Thickset,
+under middle size, with an arm like a giant and a throat like a bull,
+he had strong common sense, and he gave the impression that he would wear
+his heart out for a good friend or a great cause, but that if he chose to
+be an enemy he would be narrow, unrelenting, and persistent.  For some
+time the House had been aware that he had more than a gift for criticism
+of the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs.
+
+His speech began almost stumblingly, his h's ran loose, and his grammar
+became involved, but it was seen that he meant business, that he had that
+to say which would give anxiety to the Government, that he had a case
+wherein were the elements of popular interest and appeal, and that he was
+thinking and speaking as thousands outside the House would think and
+speak.
+
+He had waited for this hour.  Indirectly he owed to Claridge Pasha all
+that he had become.  The day in which David knocked him down saw the
+depths of his degradation reached, and, when he got up, it was to start
+on a new life uncertainly, vaguely at first, but a new life for all that.
+He knew, from a true source, of Eglington's personal hatred of Claridge
+Pasha, though he did not guess their relationship; and all his interest
+was enlisted for the man who had, as he knew, urged Kate Heaver to marry
+himself--and Kate was his great ambition now.  Above and beyond these
+personal considerations was a real sense of England's duty to the man who
+was weaving the destiny of a new land.
+
+"It isn't England's business?" he retorted, in answer to an interjection
+from a faithful soul behind the ministerial Front Bench.  "Well, it
+wasn't the business of the Good Samaritan to help the man that had been
+robbed and left for dead by the wayside; but he did it.  As to David
+Claridge's work, some have said that--I've no doubt it's been said in the
+Cabinet, and it is the thing the Under-Secretary would say as naturally
+as he would flick a fly from his boots--that it's a generation too soon.
+Who knows that?  I suppose there was those that thought John the Baptist
+was baptising too soon, that Luther preached too soon, and Savonarola was
+in too great a hurry, all because he met his death and his enemies
+triumphed--and Galileo and Hampden and Cromwell and John Howard were all
+too soon.  Who's to be judge of that?  God Almighty puts it into some
+men's minds to work for a thing that's a great, and maybe an impossible,
+thing, so far as the success of the moment is concerned.  Well, for a
+thing that has got to be done some time, the seed has to be sown, and
+it's always sown by men like Claridge Pasha, who has shown millions of
+people--barbarians and half-civilised alike--what a true lover of the
+world can do.  God knows, I think he might have stayed and found a cause
+in England, but he elected to go to the ravaging Soudan, and he is
+England there, the best of it.  And I know Claridge Pasha--from his youth
+up I have seen him, and I stand here to bear witness of what the working
+men of England will say to-morrow.  Right well the noble lord yonder
+knows that what I say is true.  He has known it for years.  Claridge
+Pasha would never have been in his present position, if the noble lord
+had not listened to the enemies of Claridge Pasha and of this country, in
+preference to those who know and hold the truth as I tell it here to-day.
+I don't know whether the noble lord has repented or not; but I do say
+that his Government will rue it, if his answer is not the one word
+'Intervention!'  Mistaken, rash or not, dreamer if you like, Claridge
+Pasha should be relieved now, and his policy discussed afterwards.  I
+don't envy the man who holds a contrary opinion; he'll be ashamed of it
+some day.  But"--he pointed towards Eglington--"but there sits the
+minister in whose hands his fate has been.  Let us hope that this speech
+of mine needn't have been made, and that I've done injustice to his
+patriotism and to the policy he will announce."
+
+"A set-back, a sharp set-back," said Lord Windlehurst, in the Peers'
+Gallery, as the cheers of the Opposition and of a good number of
+ministerialists sounded through the Chamber.  There were those on the
+Treasury Bench who saw danger ahead.  There was an attempt at a
+conference, but Kimber's seconder only said a half-dozen words, and sat
+down, and Eglington had to rise before any definite confidences could be
+exchanged.  One word only he heard behind him as he got up.  It was the
+word, "Temporise," and it came from the Prime Minister.
+
+Eglington was in no mood for temporising.  Attack only nerved him.  He
+was a good and ruthless fighter; and last night's intoxication of success
+was still in his brain.  He did not temporise.  He did not leave a way of
+retreat open for the Prime Minister, who would probably wind up the
+debate.  He fought with skill, but he fought without gloves, and the
+House needed gentle handling.  He had the gift of effective speech to a
+rare degree, and when he liked he could be insinuating and witty, but he
+had not genuine humour or good feeling, and the House knew it.  In debate
+he was biting, resourceful, and unscrupulous.  He made the fatal mistake
+of thinking that intellect and gifts of fence, followed by a brilliant
+peroration, in which he treated the commonplaces of experienced minds as
+though they were new discoveries and he was their Columbus, could
+accomplish anything.  He had never had a political crisis, but one had
+come now.
+
+In his reply he first resorted to arguments of high politics, historical,
+informative, and, in a sense, commanding; indeed, the House became
+restless under what seemed a piece of intellectual dragooning.  Signs of
+impatience appeared on his own side, and, when he ventured on a solemn
+warning about hampering ministers who alone knew the difficulties of
+diplomacy and the danger of wounding the susceptibilities of foreign
+and friendly countries, the silence was broken by a voice that said
+sneeringly, "The kid-glove Government!"
+
+Then he began to lose place with the Chamber.  He was conscious of it,
+and shifted his ground, pointing out the dangers of doing what the other
+nations interested in Egypt were not prepared to do.
+
+"Have you asked them?  Have you pressed them?" was shouted across
+the House.  Eglington ignored the interjections.  "Answer!  Answer!"
+was called out angrily, but he shrugged a shoulder and continued his
+argument.  If a man insisted on using a flying-machine before the
+principle was fully mastered and applied--if it could be mastered and
+applied--it must not be surprising if he was killed.  Amateurs sometimes
+took preposterous risks without the advice of the experts.  If Claridge
+Pasha had asked the advice of the English Government, or of any of the
+Chancellories of Europe, as to his incursions into the Soudan and his
+premature attempts at reform, he would have received expert advice that
+civilisation had not advanced to that stage in this portion of the world
+which would warrant his experiments.  It was all very well for one man to
+run vast risks and attempt quixotic enterprises, but neither he nor his
+countrymen had any right to expect Europe to embroil itself on his
+particular account.
+
+At this point he was met by angry cries of dissent, which did not come
+from the Opposition alone.  His lips set, he would not yield.  The
+Government could not hold itself responsible for Claridge Pasha's relief,
+nor in any sense for his present position.  However, from motives of
+humanity, it would make representations in the hope that the Egyptian
+Government would act; but it was not improbable, in view of past
+experiences of Claridge Pasha, that he would extricate himself from his
+present position, perhaps had done so already.  Sympathy and sentiment
+were natural and proper manifestations of human society, but governments
+were, of necessity, ruled by sterner considerations.  The House must
+realise that the Government could not act as though it were wholly a free
+agent, or as if its every move would not be matched by another move on
+the part of another Power or Powers.
+
+Then followed a brilliant and effective appeal to his own party to
+trust the Government, to credit it with feeling and with a due regard
+for English prestige and the honour brought to it by Claridge Pasha's
+personal qualities, whatever might be thought of his crusading
+enterprises.  The party must not fall into the trap of playing the game
+of the Opposition.  Then, with some supercilious praise of the "worthy
+sentiments" of Jasper Kimber's speech and a curt depreciation of its
+reasoning, he declared that: "No Government can be ruled by clamour.  The
+path to be trodden by this Government will be lighted by principles of
+progress and civilisation, humanity and peace, the urbane power of
+reason, and the persuasive influence of just consideration for the rights
+of others, rather than the thunder and the threat of the cannon and the
+sword!"
+
+He sat down amid the cheers of a large portion of his party, for the end
+of his speech had been full of effective if meretricious appeal.  But the
+debate that followed showed that the speech had been a failure.  He had
+not uttered one warm or human word concerning Claridge Pasha, and it was
+felt and said, that no pledge had been given to insure the relief of the
+man who had caught the imagination of England.
+
+The debate was fierce and prolonged.  Eglington would not agree to any
+modification of his speech, to any temporising.  Arrogant and insistent,
+he had his way, and, on a division, the Government was saved by a mere
+handful of votes--votes to save the party, not to indorse Eglington's
+speech or policy.
+
+Exasperated and with jaw set, but with a defiant smile, Eglington drove
+straight home after the House rose.  He found Hylda in the library with
+an evening paper in her hands.  She had read and reread his speech, and
+had steeled herself for "the inevitable hour," to this talk which would
+decide for ever their fate and future.
+
+Eglington entered the room smiling.  He remembered the incident of the
+night before, when she came to his study and then hurriedly retreated.
+He had been defiant and proudly disdainful at the House and on the way
+home; but in his heart of hearts he was conscious of having failed to
+have his own way; and, like such men, he wanted assurance that he could
+not err, and he wanted sympathy.  Almost any one could have given it to
+him, and he had a temptation to seek that society which was his the
+evening before; but he remembered that she was occupied where he could
+not reach her, and here was Hylda, from whom he had been estranged,
+but who must surely have seen by now that at Hamley she had been
+unreasonable, and that she must trust his judgment.  So absorbed was he
+with self and the failure of his speech, that, for a moment, he forgot
+the subject of it, and what that subject meant to them both.
+
+"What do you think of my speech, Hylda?" he asked, as he threw himself
+into a chair.  "I see you have been reading it.  Is it a full report?"
+
+She handed the paper over.  "Quite full," she answered evenly.
+
+He glanced down the columns.  "Sentimentalists!" he said as his eye
+caught an interjection.  "Cant!" he added.  Then he looked at Hylda, and
+remembered once again on whom and what his speech had been made.  He saw
+that her face was very pale.
+
+"What do you think of my speech?" he repeated stubbornly.
+
+"If you think an answer necessary, I regard it as wicked and
+unpatriotic," she answered firmly.
+
+"Yes, I suppose you would," he rejoined bitingly.  She got to her feet
+slowly, a flush passing over her face.  "If you think I would, did you
+not think that a great many other people would think so too, and for the
+same reason?" she asked, still evenly, but very slowly.  "Not for the
+same reason," he rejoined in a low, savage voice.
+
+"You do not treat me well," she said, with a voice that betrayed no hurt,
+no indignation.  It seemed to state a fact deliberately; that was all.
+
+"No, please," she added quickly, as she saw him rise to his feet with
+anger trembling at his lips.  "Do not say what is on your tongue to say.
+Let us speak quietly to-night.  It is better; and I am tired of strife,
+spoken and unspoken.  I have got beyond that.  But I want to speak of
+what you did to-day in Parliament."
+
+"Well, you have said it was wicked and unpatriotic," he rejoined, sitting
+down again and lighting a cigar, in an attempt to be composed.
+
+"What you said was that; but I am concerned with what you did.  Did your
+speech mean that you would not press the Egyptian Government to relieve
+Claridge Pasha at once?"
+
+"Is that the conclusion you draw from my words?" he asked.
+
+"Yes; but I wish to know beyond doubt if that is what you mean the
+country to believe?"
+
+"It is what I mean you to believe, my dear."
+
+She shrank from the last two words, but still went on quietly, though her
+eyes burned and she shivered.  "If you mean that you will do nothing, it
+will ruin you and your Government," she answered.  "Kimber was right,
+and--"
+
+"Kimber was inspired from here," he interjected sharply.
+
+She put her hand upon herself.  "Do you think I would intrigue against
+you?  Do you think I would stoop to intrigue?" she asked, a hand
+clasping and unclasping a bracelet on her wrist, her eyes averted, for
+very shame that he should think the thought he had uttered.
+
+"It came from this house--the influence," he rejoined.
+
+"I cannot say.  It is possible," she answered; "but you cannot think that
+I connive with my maid against you.  I think Kimber has reasons of his
+own for acting as he did to-day.  He speaks for many besides himself; and
+he spoke patriotically this afternoon.  He did his duty."
+
+"And I did not?  Do you think I act alone?"
+
+"You did not do your duty, and I think that you are not alone
+responsible.  That is why I hope the Government will be influenced by
+public feeling."  She came a step nearer to him.  "I ask you to relieve
+Claridge Pasha at any cost.  He is your father's son.  If you do not,
+when all the truth is known, you will find no shelter from the storm
+that will break over you."
+
+"You will tell--the truth?"
+
+"I do not know yet what I shall do," she answered.  "It will depend on
+you; but it is your duty to tell the truth, not mine.  That does not
+concern me; but to save Claridge Pasha does concern me."
+
+"So I have known."
+
+Her heart panted for a moment with a wild indignation; but she quieted
+herself, and answered almost calmly: "If you refuse to do that which is
+honourable--and human, then I shall try to do it for you while yet I bear
+your name.  If you will not care for your family honour, then I shall try
+to do so.  If you will not do your duty, then I will try to do it for
+you."  She looked him determinedly in the eyes.  "Through you I have lost
+nearly all I cared to keep in the world.  I should like to feel that in
+this one thing you acted honourably."
+
+He sprang to his feet, bursting with anger, in spite of the inward
+admonition that much that he prized was in danger, that any breach with
+Hylda would be disastrous.  But self-will and his native arrogance
+overruled the monitor within, and he said: "Don't preach to me, don't
+play the martyr.  You will do this and you will do that!  You will save
+my honour and the family name!  You will relieve Claridge Pasha, you will
+do what Governments choose not to do; you will do what your husband
+chooses not to do--Well, I say that you will do what your husband
+chooses to do, or take the consequences."
+
+"I think I will take the consequences," she answered.  "I will save
+Claridge Pasha, if it is possible.  It is no boast.  I will do it, if it
+can be done at all, if it is God's will that it should be done; and in
+doing it I shall be conscious that you and I will do nothing together
+again--never!  But that will not stop me; it will make me do it, the last
+right thing, before the end."
+
+She was so quiet, so curiously quiet.  Her words had a strange solemnity,
+a tragic apathy.  What did it mean?  He had gone too far, as he had done
+before.  He had blundered viciously, as he had blundered before.
+
+She spoke again before he could collect his thoughts and make reply.
+
+"I did not ask for too much, I think, and I could have forgiven and
+forgotten all the hurts you have given me, if it were not for one thing.
+You have been unjust, hard, selfish, and suspicious.  Suspicious--of me!
+No one else in all the world ever thought of me what you have thought.
+I have done all I could.  I have honourably kept the faith.  But you have
+spoiled it all.  I have no memory that I care to keep.  It is stained.
+My eyes can never bear to look upon the past again, the past with you--
+never."
+
+She turned to leave the room.  He caught her arm.  "You will wait till
+you hear what I have to say," he cried in anger.  Her last words had
+stung him so, her manner was so pitilessly scornful.  It was as though
+she looked down on him from a height.  His old arrogance fought for
+mastery over his apprehension.  What did she know?  What did she mean?
+In any case he must face it out, be strong--and merciful and affectionate
+afterwards.
+
+"Wait, Hylda," he said.  "We must talk this out."
+
+She freed her arm.  "There is nothing to talk out," she answered.
+"So far as our relations are concerned, all reason for talk is gone."
+She drew the fatal letter from the sash at her waist.  "You will think so
+too when you read this letter again."  She laid it on the table beside
+him, and, as he opened and glanced at it, she left the room.
+
+He stood with the letter in his hand, dumfounded.  "Good God!" he said,
+and sank into a chair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+FAITH JOURNEYS TO LONDON
+
+Faith withdrew her eyes from Hylda's face, and they wandered helplessly
+over the room.  They saw, yet did not see; and even in her trouble there
+was some subconscious sense softly commenting on the exquisite refinement
+and gentle beauty which seemed to fill the room; but the only definite
+objects which the eyes registered at the moment were the flowers filling
+every corner.  Hylda had been lightly adjusting a clump of roses when she
+entered; and she had vaguely noticed how pale was the face that bent over
+the flowers, how pale and yet how composed--as she had seen a Quaker
+face, after some sorrow had passed over it, and left it like a quiet
+sea in the sun, when wreck and ruin were done.  It was only a swift
+impression, for she could think of but one thing, David and his safety.
+She had come to Hylda, she said, because of Lord Eglington's position,
+and she could not believe that the Government would see David's work
+undone and David killed by the slave-dealers of Africa.
+
+Hylda's reply had given her no hope that Eglington would keep the promise
+he had made that evening long ago when her father had come upon them by
+the old mill, and because of which promise she had forgiven Eglington so
+much that was hard to forgive.  Hylda had spoken with sorrowful decision,
+and then this pause had come, in which Faith tried to gain composure and
+strength.  There was something strangely still in the two women.  From
+the far past, through Quaker ancestors, there had come to Hylda now this
+grey mist of endurance and self-control and austere reserve.  Yet behind
+it all, beneath it all, a wild heart was beating.
+
+Presently, as they looked into each other's eyes, and Faith dimly
+apprehended something of Hylda's distress and its cause, Hylda leaned
+over and spasmodically pressed her hand.
+
+"It is so, Faith," she said.  "They will do nothing.  International
+influences are too strong."  She paused.  "The Under-Secretary for
+Foreign Affairs will do nothing; but yet we must hope.  Claridge Pasha
+has saved himself in the past; and he may do so now, even though
+it is all ten times worse.  Then, there is another way.  Nahoum Pasha can
+save him, if he can be saved.  And I am going to Egypt--to Nahoum."
+
+Faith's face blanched.  Something of the stark truth swept into her
+brain.  She herself had suffered--her own life had been maimed, it had
+had its secret bitterness.  Her love for her sister's son was that of a
+mother, sister, friend combined, and he was all she had in life.  That he
+lived, that she might cherish the thought of him living, was the one
+thing she had; and David must be saved, if that might be; but this girl
+--was she not a girl, ten years younger than herself?--to go to Egypt
+to do--what?  She herself lived out of the world, but she knew the world!
+To go to Egypt, and--"Thee will not go to Egypt.  What can thee do?" she
+pleaded, something very like a sob in her voice.  "Thee is but a woman,
+and David would not be saved at such a price, and I would not have him
+saved so.  Thee will not go.  Say thee will not.  He is all God has left
+to me in life; but thee to go--ah, no!  It is a bitter world--and what
+could thee do?"
+
+Hylda looked at her reflectively.  Should she tell Faith all, and take
+her to Egypt?  No, she could not take her without telling her all, and
+that was impossible now.  There might come a time when this wise and
+tender soul might be taken into the innermost chambers, when all the
+truth might be known; but the secret of David's parentage was Eglington's
+concern most of all, and she would not speak now; and what was between
+Nahoum and David was David's concern; and she had kept his secret all
+these years.  No, Faith might not know now, and might not come with her.
+On this mission she must go alone.
+
+Hylda rose to her feet, still keeping hold of Faith's hand.  "Go back to
+Hamley and wait there," she said, in a colourless voice.  "You can do
+nothing; it may be I can do much.  Whatever can be done I can do, since
+England will not act.  Pray for his safety.  It is all you can do.  It is
+given to some to work, to others to pray.  I must work now."
+
+She led Faith towards the door; she could not endure more; she must hold
+herself firm for the journey and the struggle before her.  If she broke
+down now she could not go forward; and Faith's presence roused in her an
+emotion almost beyond control.
+
+At the door she took both of Faith's hands in hers, and kissed her cheek.
+"It is your place to stay; you will see that it is best.  Good-bye," she
+added hurriedly, and her eyes were so blurred that she could scarcely see
+the graceful, demure figure pass into the sunlit street.
+
+That afternoon Lord Windlehurst entered the Duchess of Snowdon's presence
+hurried and excited.  She started on seeing his face.
+
+"What has happened?" she asked breathlessly.  "She is gone," he
+answered.  "Our girl has gone to Egypt."
+
+The Duchess almost staggered to her feet.  "Windlehurst--gone!" she
+gasped.
+
+"I called to see her.  Her ladyship had gone into the country, the
+footman said.  I saw the butler, a faithful soul, who would die--or clean
+the area steps--for her.  He was discreet; but he knew what you and I are
+to her.  It was he got the tickets--for Marseilles and Egypt."
+
+The Duchess began to cry silently.  Big tears ran down a face from which
+the glow of feeling had long fled, but her eyes were sad enough.
+
+"Gone--gone!  It is the end!" was all she could say.  Lord Windlehurst
+frowned, though his eyes were moist.  "We must act at once.  You must go
+to Egypt, Betty.  You must catch her at Marseilles.  Her boat does not
+sail for three days.  She thought it went sooner, as it was advertised to
+do.  It is delayed--I've found that out.  You can start to-night, and--
+and save the situation.  You will do it, Betty?"
+
+"I will do anything you say, as I have always done."  She dried her eyes.
+
+"She is a good girl.  We must do all we can.  I'll arrange everything for
+you myself.  I've written this paragraph to go into the papers to-morrow
+morning: 'The Duchess of Snowdon, accompanied by Lady Eglington, left
+London last night for the Mediterranean via Calais, to be gone for two
+months or more.'  That is simple and natural.  I'll see Eglington.  He
+must make no fuss.  He thinks she has gone to Hamley, so the butler says.
+There, it's all clear.  Your work is cut out, Betty, and I know you will
+do it as no one else can."
+
+"Oh, Windlehurst," she answered, with a hand clutching at his arm, "if we
+fail, it will kill me."
+
+"If she fails, it will kill her," he answered, "and she is very young.
+What is in her mind, who can tell?  But she thinks she can help Claridge
+somehow.  We must save her, Betty."
+
+"I used to think you had no real feeling, Windlehurst.  You didn't show
+it," she said in a low voice.  "Ah, that was because you had too much,"
+he answered.  "I had to wait till you had less."  He took out his watch.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WEAVERS
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+BOOK VI.
+
+
+XL.       HYLDA SEEKS NAHOUM
+XLI.      IN THE LAND OF SHINAR
+XLII.     THE LOOM OF DESTINY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+HYLDA SEEKS NAHOUM
+
+It was as though she had gone to sleep the night before, and waked
+again upon this scene unchanged, brilliant, full of colour, a chaos of
+decoration--confluences of noisy, garish streams of life, eddies of petty
+labour.  Craftsmen crowded one upon the other in dark bazaars; merchants
+chattered and haggled on their benches; hawkers clattered and cried their
+wares.  It was a people that lived upon the streets, for all the houses
+seemed empty and forsaken.  The sais ran before the Pasha's carriage, the
+donkey-boys shrieked for their right of way, a train of camels calmly
+forced its passage through the swirling crowds, supercilious and heavy-
+laden.
+
+It seemed but yesterday since she had watched with amused eyes the
+sherbet-sellers clanking their brass saucers, the carriers streaming the
+water from the bulging goatskins into the earthen bottles, crying, "Allah
+be praised, here is coolness for thy throat for ever!" the idle singer
+chanting to the soft kanoon, the chess-players in the shade of a high
+wall, lost to the world, the dancing-girls with unveiled, shameless
+faces, posturing for evil eyes.  Nothing had changed these past six
+years.  Yet everything had changed.
+
+She saw it all as in a dream, for her mind had no time for reverie or
+retrospect; it was set on one thing only.
+
+Yet behind the one idea possessing her there was a subconscious self
+taking note of all these sights and sounds, and bringing moisture to her
+eyes.  Passing the house which David had occupied on that night when he
+and she and Nahoum and Mizraim had met, the mist of feeling almost
+blinded her; for there at the gate sat the bowab who had admitted her
+then, and with apathetic eyes had watched her go, in the hour when it
+seemed that she and David Claridge had bidden farewell for ever, two
+driftwood spars that touched and parted in the everlasting sea.  Here
+again in the Palace square were Kaid's Nubians in their glittering armour
+as of silver and gold, drawn up as she had seen them drawn then, to be
+reviewed by their overlord.
+
+She swept swiftly through the streets and bazaars on her mission to
+Nahoum.  "Lady Eglington" had asked for an interview, and Nahoum had
+granted it without delay.  He did not associate her with the girl for
+whom David Claridge had killed Foorgat Pey, and he sent his own carriage
+to bring her to the Palace.  No time had been lost, for it was less than
+twenty-four hours since she had arrived in Cairo, and very soon she would
+know the worst or the best.  She had put her past away for the moment,
+and the Duchess of Snowdon had found at Marseilles a silent, determined,
+yet gentle-tongued woman, who refused to look back, or to discuss
+anything vital to herself and Eglington, until what she had come to Egypt
+to do was accomplished.  Nor would she speak of the future, until the
+present had been fully declared and she knew the fate of David Claridge.
+In Cairo there were only varying rumours: that he was still holding out;
+that he was lost; that he had broken through; that he was a prisoner--all
+without foundation upon which she could rely.
+
+As she neared the Palace entrance, a female fortune-teller ran forward,
+thrusting towards her a gazelle's skin, filled with the instruments of
+her mystic craft, and crying out: "I divine-I reveal!  What is present I
+manifest!  What is absent I declare!  What is future I show!  Beautiful
+one, hear me.  It is all written.  To thee is greatness, and thy heart's
+desire.  Hear all!  See!  Wait for the revealing.  Thou comest from afar,
+but thy fortune is near.  Hear and see.  I divine--I reveal.  Beautiful
+one, what is future I show."
+
+Hylda's eyes looked at the poor creature eagerly, pathetically.  If it
+could only be, if she could but see one step ahead!  If the veil could
+but be lifted!  She dropped some silver into the folds of the gazelle-
+skin and waved the Gipsy away.  "There is darkness, it is all dark,
+beautiful one," cried the woman after her, "but it shall be light.  I
+show--I reveal!"
+
+Inside these Palace walls there was a revealer of more merit, as she so
+well and bitterly knew.  He could raise the veil--a dark and dangerous
+necromancer, with a flinty heart and a hand that had waited long to
+strike.  Had it struck its last blow?
+
+Outside Nahoum's door she had a moment of utter weakness, when her knees
+smote together, and her throat became parched; but before the door had
+swung wide and her eyes swept the cool and shadowed room, she was as
+composed as on that night long ago when she had faced the man who knew.
+
+Nahoum was standing in a waiting and respectful attitude as she entered.
+He advanced towards her and bowed low, but stopped dumfounded, as he saw
+who she was.  Presently he recovered himself; but he offered no further
+greeting than to place a chair for her where her face was in the shadow
+and his in the light--time of crisis as it was, she noticed this and
+marvelled at him.  His face was as she had seen it those years ago.  It
+showed no change whatever.  The eyes looked at her calmly, openly, with
+no ulterior thought behind, as it might seem.  The high, smooth forehead,
+the full but firm lips, the brown, well-groomed beard, were all
+indicative of a nature benevolent and refined.  Where did the duplicity
+lie?  Her mind answered its own question on the instant; it lay in the
+brain and the tongue.  Both were masterly weapons, an armament so
+complete that it controlled the face and eyes and outward man into a
+fair semblance of honesty.  The tongue--she remembered its insinuating
+and adroit power, and how it had deceived the man she had come to try and
+save.  She must not be misled by it.  She felt it was to be a struggle
+between them, and she must be alert and persuasive, and match him word
+for word, move for move.
+
+"I am happy to welcome you here, madame," he said in English.  "It is
+years since we met; yet time has passed you by."
+
+She flushed ever so slightly--compliment from Nahoum Pasha!  Yet she must
+not resent anything to-day; she must get what she came for, if it was
+possible.  What had Lacey said?  "A few thousand men by parcel-post, and
+some red seals-British officers."
+
+"We meet under different circumstances," she replied meaningly.  "You
+were asking a great favour then."
+
+"Ah, but of you, madame?"
+
+"I think you appealed to me when you were doubtful of the result."
+
+"Well, madame, it may be so--but, yes, you are right; I thought you were
+Claridge Pasha's kinswoman, I remember."
+
+"Excellency, you said you thought I was Claridge Pasha's kinswoman."
+
+"And you are not?" he asked reflectively.
+
+He did not understand the slight change that passed over her face.  His
+kinswoman--Claridge Pasha's kinswoman!
+
+"I was not his kinswoman," she answered calmly.  "You came to ask a
+favour then of Claridge Pasha; your life-work to do under him.  I
+remember your words: 'I can aid thee in thy great task.  Thou wouldst
+remake our Egypt, and my heart is with you.  I would rescue, not destroy.
+.  .  .  I would labour, but my master has taken away from me the anvil,
+the fire, and the hammer, and I sit without the door like an armless
+beggar.'  Those were your words, and Claridge Pasha listened and
+believed, and saved your life and gave you work; and now again you
+have power greater than all others in Egypt."
+
+"Madame, I congratulate you on a useful memory.  May it serve you as the
+hill-fountain the garden in the city!  Those indeed were my words.  I
+hear myself from your lips, and yet recognise myself, if that be not
+vanity.  But, madame, why have you sought me?  What is it you wish to
+know--to hear?"
+
+He looked at her innocently, as though he did not know her errand; as
+though beyond, in the desert, there was no tragedy approaching--or come.
+
+"Excellency, you are aware that I have come to ask for news of Claridge
+Pasha."  She leaned forward slightly, but, apart from her tightly
+interlaced fingers, it would not have been possible to know that she was
+under any strain.
+
+"You come to me instead of to the Effendina.  May I ask why, madame?
+Your husband's position--I did not know you were Lord Eglington's wife--
+would entitle you to the highest consideration."
+
+"I knew that Nahoum Pasha would have the whole knowledge, while the
+Effendina would have part only.  Excellency, will you not tell me what
+news You have?  Is Claridge Pasha alive?"
+
+"Madame, I do not know.  He is in the desert.  He was surrounded.  For
+over a month there has been no word-none.  He is in danger.  His way by
+the river was blocked.  He stayed too long.  He might have escaped, but
+he would insist on saving the loyal natives, on remaining with them,
+since he could not bring them across the desert; and the river and the
+desert are silent.  Nothing comes out of that furnace yonder.  Nothing
+comes."
+
+He bent his eyes upon her complacently.  Her own dropped.  She could not
+bear that he should see the misery in them.
+
+"You have come to try and save him, madame.  What did you expect to do?
+Your Government did not strengthen my hands; your husband did nothing--
+nothing that could make it possible for me to act.  There are many
+nations here, alas!  Your husband does not take so great an interest in
+the fate of Claridge Pasha as yourself, madame."
+
+She ignored the insult.  She had determined to endure everything, if she
+might but induce this man to do the thing that could be done--if it was
+not too late.  Before she could frame a reply, he said urbanely:
+
+"But that is not to be expected.  There was that between Claridge Pasha
+and yourself which would induce you to do all you might do for him, to be
+anxious for his welfare.  Gratitude is a rare thing--as rare as the
+flower of the century--aloe; but you have it, madame."
+
+There was no chance to misunderstand him.  Foorgat Bey--he knew the
+truth, and had known it all these years.
+
+"Excellency," she said, "if through me, Claridge Pasha--"
+
+"One moment, madame," he interrupted, and, opening a drawer, took out a
+letter.  "I think that what you would say may be found here, with much
+else that you will care to know.  It is the last news of Claridge Pasha--
+a letter from him.  I understand all you would say to me; but he who has
+most at stake has said it, and, if he failed, do you think, madame, that
+you could succeed?"
+
+He handed her the letter with a respectful salutation.
+
+"In the hour he left, madame, he came to know that the name of Foorgat
+Bey was not blotted from the book of Time, nor from Fate's reckoning."
+
+After all these years!  Her instinct had been true, then, that night so
+long ago.  The hand that took the letter trembled slightly in spite of
+her will, but it was not the disclosure Nahoum had made which caused her
+agitation.  This letter she held was in David Claridge's hand, the first
+she had ever seen, and, maybe, the last that he had ever written, or that
+any one would ever see, a document of tears.  But no, there were no tears
+in this letter!  As Hylda read it the trembling passed from her fingers,
+and a great thrilling pride possessed her.  If tragedy had come, then it
+had fallen like a fire from heaven, not like a pestilence rising from the
+earth.  Here indeed was that which justified all she had done, what she
+was doing now, what she meant to do when she had read the last word of it
+and the firm, clear signature beneath.
+
+     "Excellency [the letter began in English], I came into the desert
+     and into the perils I find here, with your last words in my ear,
+     'There is the matter of Foorgat Bey.'  The time you chose to speak
+     was chosen well for your purpose, but ill for me.  I could not turn
+     back, I must go on.  Had I returned, of what avail?  What could I do
+     but say what I say here, that my hand killed Foorgat Bey; that I had
+     not meant to kill him, though at the moment I struck I took no heed
+     whether he lived or died.  Since you know of my sorrowful deed, you
+     also know why Foorgat Bey was struck down.  When, as I left the bank
+     of the Nile, your words blinded my eyes, my mind said in its misery:
+     'Now, I see!'  The curtains fell away from between you and me, and I
+     saw all that you had done for vengeance and revenge.  You knew all
+     on that night when you sought your life of me and the way back to
+     Kaid's forgiveness.  I see all as though you spoke it in my ear.
+     You had reason to hurt me, but you had no reason for hurting Egypt,
+     as you have done.  I did not value my life, as you know well, for it
+     has been flung into the midst of dangers for Egypt's sake, how
+     often!  It was not cowardice which made me hide from you and all the
+     world the killing of Foorgat Bey.  I desired to face the penalty,
+     for did not my act deny all that I had held fast from my youth up?
+     But there was another concerned--a girl, but a child in years, as
+     innocent and true a being as God has ever set among the dangers of
+     this life, and, by her very innocence and unsuspecting nature, so
+     much more in peril before such unscrupulous wiles as were used by
+     Foorgat Bey.
+
+     "I have known you many years, Nahoum, and dark and cruel as your
+     acts have been against the work I gave my life to do, yet I think
+     that there was ever in you, too, the root of goodness.  Men would
+     call your acts treacherous if they knew what you had done; and so
+     indeed they were; but yet I have seen you do things to others--not
+     to me--which could rise only from the fountain of pure waters.  Was
+     it partly because I killed Foorgat and partly because I came to
+     place and influence and power, that you used me so, and all that I
+     did?  Or was it the East at war with the West, the immemorial feud
+     and foray?
+
+     "This last I will believe; for then it will seem to be something
+     beyond yourself--centuries of predisposition, the long stain of the
+     indelible--that drove you to those acts of matricide.  Ay, it is
+     that!  For, Armenian as you are, this land is your native land, and
+     in pulling down what I have built up--with you, Nahoum, with you--
+     you have plunged the knife into the bosom of your mother.  Did it
+     never seem to you that the work which you did with me was a good
+     work--the reduction of the corvee, the decrease of conscription, the
+     lessening of taxes of the fellah, the bridges built, the canals dug,
+     the seed distributed, the plague stayed, the better dwellings for
+     the poor in the Delta, the destruction of brigandage, the slow
+     blotting-out of exaction and tyranny under the kourbash, the quiet
+     growth of law and justice, the new industries started--did not all
+     these seem good to you, as you served the land with me, your great
+     genius for finance, ay, and your own purse, helping on the things
+     that were dear to me, for Egypt's sake?  Giving with one hand
+     freely, did your soul not misgive you when you took away with the
+     other?
+
+     "When you tore down my work, you were tearing down your own; for,
+     more than the material help I thought you gave in planning and
+     shaping reforms, ay, far more than all, was the feeling in me which
+     helped me over many a dark place, that I had you with me, that I was
+     not alone.  I trusted you, Nahoum.  A life for a life you might have
+     had for the asking; but a long torture and a daily weaving of the
+     web of treachery--that has taken more than my life; it has taken
+     your own, for you have killed the best part of yourself, that which
+     you did with me; and here in an ever-narrowing circle of death I say
+     to you that you will die with me.  Power you have, but it will
+     wither in your grasp.  Kaid will turn against you; for with my
+     failure will come a dark reaction in his mind, which feels the cloud
+     of doom drawing over it.  Without me, with my work falling about his
+     ears, he will, as he did so short a time ago, turn to Sharif and
+     Higli and the rest; and the only comfort you will have will be that
+     you destroyed the life of him who killed your brother.  Did you love
+     your brother?  Nay, not more than did I, for I sent his soul into
+     the void, and I would gladly have gone after it to ask God for the
+     pardon of all his sins--and mine.  Think: I hid the truth, but why?
+     Because a woman would suffer an unmerited scandal and shame.
+     Nothing could recall Foorgat Bey; but for that silence I gave my
+     life, for the land which was his land.  Do you betray it, then?
+
+     "And now, Nahoum, the gulf in which you sought to plunge me when you
+     had ruined all I did is here before me.  The long deception has
+     nearly done its work.  I know from Ebn Ezra Bey what passed between
+     you.  They are out against me--the slave-dealers--from Senaar to
+     where I am.  The dominion of Egypt is over here.  Yet I could
+     restore it with a thousand men and a handful of European officers,
+     had I but a show of authority from Cairo, which they think has
+     deserted me.
+
+     "I am shut up here with a handful of men who can fight and thousands
+     who cannot fight, and food grows scarcer, and my garrison is worn
+     and famished; but each day I hearten them with the hope that you
+     will send me a thousand men from Cairo.  One steamer pounding here
+     from the north with men who bring commands from the Effendina, and
+     those thousands out yonder beyond my mines and moats and guns will
+     begin to melt away.  Nahoum, think not that you shall triumph over
+     David Claridge.  If it be God's will that I shall die here, my work
+     undone, then, smiling, I shall go with step that does not falter, to
+     live once more; and another day the work that I began will rise
+     again in spite of you or any man.
+
+     "Nahoum, the killing of Foorgat Bey has been like a cloud upon all
+     my past.  You know me, and you know I do not lie.  Yet I do not
+     grieve that I hid the thing--it was not mine only; and if ever you
+     knew a good woman, and in dark moments have turned to her, glad that
+     she was yours, think what you would have done for her, how you would
+     have sheltered her against aught that might injure her, against
+     those things women are not made to bear.  Then think that I hid the
+     deed for one who was a stranger to me, whose life must ever lay far
+     from mine, and see clearly that I did it for a woman's sake, and not
+     for this woman's sake; for I had never seen her till the moment I
+     struck Foorgat Bey into silence and the tomb.  Will you not
+     understand, Nahoum?
+
+     "Yonder, I see the tribes that harry me.  The great guns firing make
+     the day a burden, the nights are ever fretted by the dangers of
+     surprise, and there is scarce time to bury the dead whom sickness
+     and the sword destroy.  From the midst of it all my eyes turn to you
+     in Cairo, whose forgiveness I ask for the one injury I did you;
+     while I pray that you will seek pardon for all that you have done to
+     me and to those who will pass with me, if our circle is broken.
+     Friend, Achmet the Ropemaker is here fighting for Egypt.  Art thou
+     less, then, than Achmet?  So, God be with thee.
+
+                                        "DAVID CLARIDGE."
+
+
+Without a pause Hylda had read the letter from the first word to the
+last.  She was too proud to let this conspirator and traitor see what
+David's words could do to her.  When she read the lines concerning
+herself, she became cold from head to foot, but she knew that Nahoum
+never took his eyes from her face, and she gave no outward sign of what
+was passing within.  When she had finished it, she folded it up calmly,
+her eyes dwelt for a moment on the address upon the envelope, and then
+she handed it back to Nahoum without a word.  She looked him in the eyes
+and spoke.  "He saved your life, he gave you all you had lost.  It was
+not his fault that Prince Kaid chose him for his chief counsellor.  You
+would be lying where your brother lies, were it not for Claridge Pasha."
+
+"It may be; but the luck was with me; and I have my way."
+
+She drew herself together to say what was hard to say.  "Excellency, the
+man who was killed deserved to die.  Only by lies, only by subterfuge,
+only because I was curious to see the inside of the Palace, and because I
+had known him in London, did I, without a thought of indiscretion, give
+myself to his care to come here.  I was so young; I did not know life, or
+men--or Egyptians."  The last word was uttered with low scorn.
+
+He glanced up quickly, and for the first time she saw a gleam of malice
+in his eyes.  She could not feel sorry she had said it, yet she must
+remove the impression if possible.
+
+"What Claridge Pasha did, any man would have done, Excellency.  He
+struck, and death was an accident.  Foorgat's temple struck the corner of
+a pedestal.
+
+"His death was instant.  He would have killed Claridge Pasha if it had
+been possible--he tried to do so.  But, Excellency, if you have a
+daughter, if you ever had a child, what would you have done if any man
+had--"
+
+"In the East daughters are more discreet; they tempt men less," he
+answered quietly, and fingered the string of beads he carried.
+
+"Yet you would have done as Claridge Pasha did.  That it was your brother
+was an accident, and--"
+
+"It was an accident that the penalty must fall on Claridge Pasha, and on
+you, madame.  I did not choose the objects of penalty.  Destiny chose
+them, as Destiny chose Claridge Pasha as the man who should supplant me,
+who should attempt to do these mad things for Egypt against the judgment
+of the world--against the judgment of your husband.  Shall I have better
+judgment than the chancellories of Europe and England--and Lord
+Eglington?"
+
+"Excellency, you know what moves other nations; but it is for Egypt to
+act for herself.  You ask me why I did not go to the Effendina.  I come
+to you because I know that you could circumvent the Effendina, even
+if he sent ten thousand men.  It is the way in Egypt."
+
+"Madame, you have insight--will you not look farther still, and see that,
+however good Claridge Pasha's work might be some day in the far future,
+it is not good to-day.  It is too soon.  At the beginning of the
+twentieth century, perhaps.  Men pay the penalty of their mistakes.
+A man's life"--he watched her closely with his wide, benevolent eyes--"is
+neither here nor there, nor a few thousands, in the destiny of a nation.
+A man who ventures into a lion's den must not be surprised if he goes as
+Harrik went--ah, perhaps you do not know how Harrik went!  A man who
+tears at the foundations of a house must not be surprised if the timbers
+fall on him and on his workmen.  It is Destiny that Claridge Pasha should
+be the slayer of my brother, and a danger to Egypt, and one whose life is
+so dear to you, madame.  You would have it otherwise, and so would I, but
+we must take things as they are--and you see that letter.  It is seven
+weeks since then, and it may be that the circle has been broken.  Yet it
+may not be so.  The circle may be smaller, but not broken."
+
+She felt how he was tempting her from word to word with a merciless
+ingenuity; yet she kept to her purpose; and however hopeless it seemed,
+she would struggle on.
+
+"Excellency," she said in a low, pleading tone, "has he not suffered
+enough?  Has he not paid the price of that life which you would not bring
+back if you could?  No, in those places of your mind where no one can see
+lies the thought that you would not bring back Foorgat Bey.  It is not an
+eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth that has moved you; it has not
+been love of Foorgat Bey; it has been the hatred of the East for the
+West.  And yet you are a Christian!  Has Claridge Pasha not suffered
+enough, Excellency?  Have you not had your fill of revenge?  Have you
+not done enough to hurt a man whose only crime was that he killed a man
+to save a woman, and had not meant to kill?"
+
+"Yet he says in his letter that the thought of killing would not have
+stopped him."
+
+"Does one think at such a moment?  Did he think? There was no time.  It
+was the work of an instant.  Ah, Fate was not kind, Excellency!  If it
+had been, I should have been permitted to kill Foorgat Bey with my own
+hands."
+
+"I should have found it hard to exact the penalty from you, madame."
+
+The words were uttered in so neutral a way that they were enigmatical,
+and she could not take offence or be sure of his meaning.
+
+"Think, Excellency.  Have you ever known one so selfless, so good,
+so true?  For humanity's sake, would you not keep alive such a man?
+If there were a feud as old as Adam between your race and his, would you
+not before this life of sacrifice lay down the sword and the bitter
+challenge?  He gave you his hand in faith and trust, because your God was
+his God, your prophet and lord his prophet and lord.  Such faith should
+melt your heart.  Can you not see that he tried to make compensation for
+Foorgat's death, by giving you your life and setting you where you are
+now, with power to save or kill him?"
+
+"You call him great; yet I am here in safety, and he is--where he is.
+Have you not heard of the strife of minds and wills?  He represented the
+West, I the East.  He was a Christian, so was I; the ground of our battle
+was a fair one, and--and I have won."
+
+"The ground of battle fair!" she protested bitterly.  "He did not know
+that there was strife between you.  He did not fight you.  I think that
+he always loved you, Excellency.  He would have given his life for you,
+if it had been in danger.  Is there in that letter one word that any man
+could wish unwritten when the world was all ended for all men?  But no,
+there was no strife between you--there was only hatred on your part.  He
+was so much greater than you that you should feel no rivalry, no strife.
+The sword he carries cuts as wide as Time.  You are of a petty day in a
+petty land.  Your mouth will soon be filled with dust, and you will be
+forgotten.  He will live in the history of the world.  Excellency,
+I plead for him because I owe him so much: he killed a man and brought
+upon himself a lifelong misery for me.  It is all I can do, plead to you
+who know the truth about him--yes, you know the truth--to make an effort
+to save him.  It may be too late; but yet God may be waiting for you to
+lift your hand.  You said the circle may be smaller, but it may be
+unbroken still.  Will you not do a great thing once, and win a woman's
+gratitude, and the thanks of the world, by trying to save one who makes
+us think better of humanity?  Will you not have the name of Nahoum Pasha
+linked with his--with his who thought you were his friend?  Will you not
+save him?"
+
+He got slowly to his feet, a strange look in his eyes.  "Your words are
+useless.  I will not save him for your sake; I will not save him for the
+world's sake; I will not save him--"
+
+A cry of pain and grief broke from her, and she buried her face in her
+hands.
+
+"--I will not save him for any other sake than his own."
+
+He paused.  Slowly, as dazed as though she had received a blow, Hylda
+raised her face and her hands dropped in her lap.
+
+"For any other sake than his own!"  Her eyes gazed at him in a
+bewildered, piteous way.  What did he mean?  His voice seemed to come
+from afar off.
+
+"Did you think that you could save him?  That I would listen to you, if I
+did not listen to him?  No, no, madame.  Not even did he conquer me; but
+something greater than himself within himself, it conquered me."
+
+She got to her feet gasping, her hands stretched out.  "Oh, is it true--
+is it true?" she cried.
+
+"The West has conquered," he answered.
+
+"You will help him--you will try to save him?"  "When, a month ago, I
+read the letter you have read, I tried to save him.  I sent secretly four
+thousand men who were at Wady Halfa to relieve him--if it could be done;
+five hundred to push forward on the quickest of the armed steamers, the
+rest to follow as fast as possible.  I did my best.  That was a month
+ago, and I am waiting--waiting and hoping, madame."
+
+Suddenly she broke down.  Tears streamed from her eyes.  She sank into
+the chair, and sobs shook her from head to foot.
+
+"Be patient, be composed, madame," Nahoum said gently.  "I have tried you
+greatly--forgive me.  Nay, do not weep.  I have hope.  We may hear from
+him at any moment now," he added softly, and there was a new look in his
+wide blue eyes as they were bent on her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+IN THE LAND OF SHINAR
+
+     "Then I said to the angel that talked with me, Whither do these bear
+     the Ephah?
+
+     "And he said unto me, To build it an house in the land of Shinar;
+     and it shall be established, and set there upon her own base."
+
+
+David raised his head from the paper he was studying.  He looked at Lacey
+sharply.  "And how many rounds of ammunition?" he asked.
+
+"Ten thousand, Saadat."
+
+"How many shells?" he continued, making notes upon the paper before him.
+
+"Three hundred, Saadat."
+
+"How many hundredweight of dourha?"  "Eighty--about."
+
+"And how many mouths to feed?"  "Five thousand."
+
+"How many fighters go with the mouths?"
+"Nine hundred and eighty-of a kind."
+
+"And of the best?'
+
+"Well, say, five hundred."
+
+"Thee said six hundred three days ago, Lacey."
+
+"Sixty were killed or wounded on Sunday, and forty I reckon in the
+others, Saadat."
+
+The dark eyes flashed, the lips set.  "The fire was sickening--they fell
+back?"
+
+"Well, Saadat, they reflected--at the wrong time."
+
+"They ran?"
+
+"Not back--they were slow in getting on."
+
+"But they fought it out?"
+
+"They had to--root hog, or die.  You see, Saadat, in that five hundred
+I'm only counting the invincibles, the up-and-at-'ems, the blind-goers
+that 'd open the lid of Hell and jump in after the enemy."
+
+The pale face lighted.  "So many!  I would not have put the estimate half
+so high.  Not bad for a dark race fighting for they know not what!"
+
+"They know that all right; they are fighting for you, Saadat."
+
+David seemed not to hear.  "Five hundred--so many, and the enemy so near,
+the temptation so great."
+
+"The deserters are all gone to Ali Wad Hei, Saadat.  For a month there
+have been only the deserted."
+
+A hardness crept into the dark eyes.  "Only the deserted!"  He looked out
+to where the Nile lost itself in the northern distance.  "I asked Nahoum
+for one thousand men, I asked England for the word which would send them.
+I asked for a thousand, but even two hundred would turn the scale--the
+sign that the Inglesi had behind him Cairo and London.  Twenty weeks, and
+nothing comes!"
+
+He got to his feet slowly and walked up and down the room for a moment,
+glancing out occasionally towards the clump of palms which marked the
+disappearance of the Nile into the desert beyond his vision.  At
+intervals a cannon-shot crashed upon the rarefied air, as scores of
+thousands had done for months past, torturing to ear and sense and nerve.
+The confused and dulled roar of voices came from the distance also; and,
+looking out to the landward side, David saw a series of movements of the
+besieging forces, under the Arab leader, Ali Wad Hei.  Here a loosely
+formed body of lancers and light cavalry cantered away towards the south,
+converging upon the Nile; there a troop of heavy cavalry in glistening
+mail moved nearer to the northern defences; and between, battalions of
+infantry took up new positions, while batteries of guns moved nearer to
+the river, curving upon the palace north and south.  Suddenly David's
+eyes flashed fire.  He turned to Lacey eagerly.  Lacey was watching with
+eyes screwed up shrewdly, his forehead shining with sweat.
+
+"Saadat," he said suddenly, "this isn't the usual set of quadrilles.
+It's the real thing.  They're watching the river--waiting."
+
+"But south!" was David's laconic response.  At the same moment he struck
+a gong.  An orderly entered.  Giving swift instructions, he turned to
+Lacey again.  "Not Cairo--Darfur," he added.
+
+"Ebn Ezra Bey coming!  Ali Wad Hei's got word from up the Nile, I guess."
+
+David nodded, and his face clouded.  "We should have had word also," he
+said sharply.
+
+There was a knock at the door, and Mahommed Hassan entered, supporting an
+Arab, down whose haggard face blood trickled from a wound in the head,
+while an arm hung limp at his side.
+
+"Behold, Saadat--from Ebn Ezra Bey," Mahommed said.  The man drooped
+beside him.
+
+David caught a tin cup from a shelf, poured some liquor into it, and held
+it to the lips of the fainting man.  "Drink," he said.  The Arab drank
+greedily, and, when he had finished, gave a long sigh of satisfaction.
+"Let him sit," David added.
+
+When the man was seated on a sheepskin, the huge Mahommed squatting
+behind like a sentinel, David questioned him.  "What is thy name--thy
+news?" he asked in Arabic.
+
+"I am called Feroog.  I come from Ebn Ezra Bey, to whom be peace!" he
+answered.  "Thy messenger, Saadat, behold he died of hunger and thirst,
+and his work became mine.  Ebn Ezra Bey came by the river.  .  .  ."
+"He is near?" asked David impatiently.
+
+"He is twenty miles away."
+
+"Thou camest by the desert?"
+
+"By the desert, Saadat, as Ebn Ezra effendi comes."
+
+"By the desert!  But thou saidst he came by the river."
+
+"Saadat, yonder, forty miles from where we are, the river makes a great
+curve.  There the effendi landed in the night with four hundred men to
+march hither.  But he commanded that the boats should come on slowly and
+receive the attack in the river, while he came in from the desert."
+
+David's eye flashed.  "A great device.  They will be here by midnight,
+then, perhaps?"
+
+"At midnight, Saadat, by the blessing of God."
+
+"How wert thou wounded?"
+
+"I came upon two of the enemy.  They were mounted.  I fought them.  Upon
+the horse of one I came here."
+
+"The other?"
+
+"God is merciful, Saadat.  He is in the bosom of God."
+
+"How many men come by the river?"
+
+"But fifty, Saadat," was the answer, "but they have sworn by the stone in
+the Kaabah not to surrender."
+
+"And those who come with the effendi, with Ebn Ezra Bey, are they as
+those who will not surrender?"
+
+"Half of them are so.  They were with thee, as was I, Saadat, when the
+great sickness fell upon us, and were healed by thee, and afterwards
+fought with thee."  David nodded abstractedly, and motioned to Mahommed
+to take the man away; then he said to Lacey: "How long do you think we
+can hold out?"
+
+"We shall have more men, but also more rifles to fire, and more mouths to
+fill, if Ebn Ezra gets in, Saadat."
+
+David raised his head.  "But with more rifles to fire away your ten
+thousand rounds"--he tapped the paper on the table--"and eat the eighty
+hundredweight of dourha, how long can we last?"
+
+"If they are to fight, and with full stomachs, and to stake everything on
+that one fight, then we can last two days.  No more, I reckon."
+
+"I make it one day," answered David.  "In three days we shall have no
+food, and unless help comes from Cairo, we must die or surrender.  It is
+not well to starve on the chance of help coming, and then die fighting
+with weak arms and broken spirit.  Therefore, we must fight to morrow,
+if Ebn Ezra gets in to-night.  I think we shall fight well," he added.
+"You think so?"
+
+"You are a born fighter, Saadat."
+
+A shadow fell on David's face, and his lips tightened.  "I was not born a
+fighter, Lacey.  The day we met first no man had ever died by my hand or
+by my will."
+
+"There are three who must die at sunset--an hour from now-by thy will,
+Saadat."
+
+A startled look came into David's face.  "Who?" he asked.
+
+"The Three Pashas, Saadat.  They have been recaptured."
+
+"Recaptured!" rejoined David mechanically.
+
+"Achmet Pasha got them from under the very noses of the sheikhs before
+sunrise this morning."
+
+"Achmet--Achmet Pasha!"  A light came into David's face again.
+
+"You will keep faith with Achmet, Saadat.  He risked his life to get
+them.  They betrayed you, and betrayed three hundred good men to death.
+If they do not die, those who fight for you will say that it doesn't
+matter whether men fight for you or betray you, they get the same stuff
+off the same plate.  If we are going to fight to-morrow, it ought to be
+with a clean bill of health."
+
+"They served me well so long--ate at my table, fought with me.  But--but
+traitors must die, even as Harrik died."  A stern look came into his
+face.  He looked round the great room slowly.  "We have done our best,"
+he said.  "I need not have failed, if there had been no treachery. . . ."
+
+"If it hadn't been for Nahoum!"
+
+David raised his head.  Supreme purpose came into his bearing.  A grave
+smile played at his lips, as he gave that quick toss of the head which
+had been a characteristic of both Eglington and himself.  His eyes shone-
+a steady, indomitable light.  "I will not give in.  I still have hope.
+We are few and they are many, but the end of a battle has never been
+sure.  We may not fail even now.  Help may come from Cairo even to-
+morrow."
+
+"Say, somehow you've always pulled through before, Saadat.
+When I've been most frightened I've perked up and stiffened my backbone,
+remembering your luck.  I've seen a blue funk evaporate by thinking of
+how things always come your way just when the worst seems at the worst."
+
+David smiled as he caught up a small cane and prepared to go.  Looking
+out of a window, he stroked his thin, clean-shaven face with a lean
+finger.  Presently a movement in the desert arrested his attention.  He
+put a field-glass to his eyes, and scanned the field of operations
+closely once more.
+
+"Good-good!" he burst out cheerfully.  "Achmet has done the one thing
+possible.  The way to the north will be still open.  He has flung his men
+between the Nile and the enemy, and now the batteries are at work."
+Opening the door, they passed out.  "He has anticipated my orders," he
+added.  "Come, Lacey, it will be an anxious night.  The moon is full, and
+Ebn Ezra Bey has his work cut out--sharp work for all of us, and .  .  ."
+
+Lacey could not hear the rest of his words in the roar of the artillery.
+David's steamers in the river were pouring shot into the desert where the
+enemy lay, and Achmet's "friendlies" and the Egyptians were making good
+their new position.  As David and Lacey, fearlessly exposing themselves
+to rifle fire, and taking the shortest and most dangerous route to where
+Achmet fought, rode swiftly from the palace, Ebn Ezra's three steamers
+appeared up the river, and came slowly down to where David's gunboats
+lay.  Their appearance was greeted by desperate discharges of artillery
+from the forces under Ali Wad Hei, who had received word of their coming
+two hours before, and had accordingly redisposed his attacking forces.
+But for Achmet's sharp initiative, the boldness of the attempt to cut off
+the way north and south would have succeeded, and the circle of fire and
+sword would have been complete.  Achmet's new position had not been
+occupied before, for men were too few, and the position he had just left
+was now exposed to attack.
+
+Never since the siege began had the foe shown such initiative and
+audacity.  They had relied on the pressure of famine and decimation by
+sickness, the steady effects of sorties, with consequent fatalities and
+desertions, to bring the Liberator of the Slaves to his knees.  Ebn Ezra
+Bey had sought to keep quiet the sheikhs far south, but he had been shut
+up in Darffur for months, and had been in as bad a plight as David.  He
+had, however, broken through at last.  His ruse in leaving the steamers
+in the night and marching across the desert was as courageous as it was
+perilous, for, if discovered before he reached the beleaguered place,
+nothing could save his little force from destruction.  There was one way
+in from the desert to the walled town, and it was through that space
+which Achmet and his men had occupied, and on which Ali Wad Hei might
+now, at any moment, throw his troops.
+
+David's heart sank as he saw the danger.  From the palace he had sent an
+orderly with a command to an officer to move forward and secure the
+position, but still the gap was open, and the men he had ordered to
+advance remained where they were.  Every minute had its crisis.
+
+As Lacey and himself left the town the misery of the place smote him in
+the eyes.  Filth, refuse, debris filled the streets.  Sick and dying men
+called to him from dark doorways, children and women begged for bread,
+carcasses lay unburied, vultures hovering above them--his tireless
+efforts had not been sufficient to cope with the daily horrors of the
+siege.  But there was no sign of hostility to him.  Voices called
+blessings on him from dark doorways, lips blanching in death commended
+him to Allah, and now and then a shrill call told of a fighter who had
+been laid low, but who had a spirit still unbeaten.  Old men and women
+stood over their cooking-pots waiting for the moment of sunset; for it
+was Ramadan, and the faithful fasted during the day--as though every day
+was not a fast.
+
+Sunset was almost come, as David left the city and galloped away
+to send forces to stop the gap of danger before it was filled by the foe.
+Sunset--the Three Pashas were to die at sunset!  They were with Achmet,
+and in a few moments they would be dead.  As David and Lacey rode hard,
+they suddenly saw a movement of men on foot at a distant point of the
+field, and then a small mounted troop, fifty at most, detach themselves
+from the larger force and, in close formation, gallop fiercely down on
+the position which Achmet had left.  David felt a shiver of anxiety and
+apprehension as he saw this sharp, sweeping advance.  Even fifty men,
+well intrenched, could hold the position until the main body of Ali Wad
+Hei's infantry came on.
+
+They rode hard, but harder still rode Ali Wad Hei's troop of daring
+Arabs.  Nearer and nearer they came.  Suddenly from the trenches, which
+they had thought deserted, David saw jets of smoke rise, and a half-dozen
+of the advancing troop fell from their saddles, their riderless horses
+galloping on.
+
+David's heart leaped: Achmet had, then, left men behind, hidden from
+view; and these were now defending the position.  Again came the jets of
+smoke, and again more Arabs dropped from their saddles.  But the others
+still came on.  A thousand feet away others fell.  Twenty-two of the
+fifty had already gone.  The rest fired their rifles as they galloped.
+But now, to David's relief, his own forces, which should have moved half
+an hour before, were coming swiftly down to cut off the approach of Ali
+Wad Hei's infantry, and he turned his horse upon the position where a
+handful of men were still emptying the saddles of the impetuous enemy.
+But now all that were left of the fifty were upon the trenches.  Then
+came the flash of swords, puffs of smoke, the thrust of lances, and
+figures falling from the screaming, rearing horses.
+
+Lacey's pistol was in his hand, David's sword was gripped tight, as they
+rushed upon the melee.  Lacey's pistol snapped, and an Arab fell; again,
+and another swayed in his saddle.  David's sword swept down, and a
+turbaned head was gashed by a mortal stroke.  As he swung towards another
+horseman, who had struck down a defender of the trenches, an Arab raised
+himself in his saddle and flung a lance with a cry of terrible malice;
+but, even as he did so, a bullet from Lacey's pistol pierced his
+shoulder.  The shot had been too late to stop the lance, but sufficient
+to divert its course.  It caught David in the flesh of the body under the
+arm--a slight wound only.  A few inches to the right, however, and his
+day would have been done.
+
+The remaining Arabs turned and fled.  The fight was over.  As David,
+dismounting, stood with dripping sword in his hand, in imagination, he
+heard the voice of Kaid say to him, as it said that night when he killed
+Foorgat Bey: "Hast thou never killed a man?"
+
+For an instant it blinded him, then he was conscious that, on the ground
+at his feet, lay one of the Three Pashas who were to die at sunset.  It
+was sunset now, and the man was dead.  Another of the Three sat upon the
+ground winding his thigh with the folds of a dead Arab's turban, blood
+streaming from his gashed face.  The last of the trio stood before David,
+stoical and attentive.  For a moment David looked at the Three, the dead
+man and the two living men, and then suddenly turned to where the
+opposing forces were advancing.  His own men were now between the
+position and Ali Wad Hei's shouting fanatics.  They would be able to
+reach and defend the post in time.  He turned and gave orders.  There
+were only twenty men besides the two pashas, whom his commands also
+comprised.  Two small guns were in place.  He had them trained on that
+portion of the advancing infantry of Ali Wad Hei not yet covered by his
+own forces.  Years of work and responsibility had made him master of many
+things, and long ago he had learned the work of an artilleryman.  In a
+moment a shot, well directed, made a gap in the ranks of the advancing
+foe.  An instant afterwards a shot from the other gun fired by the
+unwounded pasha, who, in his youth, had been an officer of artillery,
+added to the confusion in the swerving ranks, and the force hesitated;
+and now from Ebn Ezra Bey's river steamers, which had just arrived, there
+came a flank fire.  The force wavered.  From David's gun another shot
+made havoc.  They turned and fell back quickly.  The situation was saved.
+
+As if by magic the attack of the enemy all over the field ceased.  By
+sunset they had meant to finish this enterprise, which was to put the
+besieged wholly in their hands, and then to feast after the day's
+fasting.  Sunset had come, and they had been foiled; but hunger demanded
+the feast.  The order to cease firing and retreat sounded, and three
+thousand men hurried back to the cooking-pot, the sack of dourha, and the
+prayer mat.  Malaish, if the infidel Inglesi was not conquered to-day,
+he should be beaten and captured and should die to-morrow!  And yet there
+were those among them who had a well-grounded apprehension that the
+"Inglesi" would win in the end.
+
+By the trenches, where five men had died so bravely, and a traitorous
+pasha had paid the full penalty of a crime and won a soldier's death,
+David spoke to his living comrades.  As he prepared to return to the
+city, he said to the unwounded pasha: "Thou wert to die at sunset; it was
+thy sentence."
+
+And the pasha answered: "Saadat, as for death--I am ready to die, but
+have I not fought for thee?"  David turned to the wounded pasha.
+
+"Why did Achmet Pasha spare thee?"
+
+"He did not spare us, Saadat.  Those who fought with us but now were to
+shoot us at sunset, and remain here till other troops came.  Before
+sunset we saw the danger, since no help came.  Therefore we fought to
+save this place for thee."
+
+David looked them in the eyes.  "Ye were traitors," he said, "and for an
+example it was meet that ye should die.  But this that ye have done shall
+be told to all who fight to-morrow, and men will know why it is I pardon
+treachery.  Ye shall fight again, if need be, betwixt this hour and
+morning, and ye shall die, if need be.  Ye are willing?"
+
+Both men touched their foreheads, their lips, and their breasts.
+"Whether it be death or it be life, Inshallah, we are true to thee,
+Saadat!" one said, and the other repeated the words after him.  As they
+salaamed David left them, and rode forward to the advancing forces.
+
+Upon the roof of the palace Mahommed Hassan watched and waited, his eyes
+scanning sharply the desert to the south, his ears strained to catch that
+stir of life which his accustomed ears had so often detected in the
+desert, when no footsteps, marching, or noises could be heard.  Below,
+now in the palace, now in the defences, his master, the Saadat, planned
+for the last day's effort on the morrow, gave directions to the officers,
+sent commands to Achmet Pasha, arranged for the disposition of his
+forces, with as strange a band of adherents and subordinates as ever men
+had--adventurers, to whom adventure in their own land had brought no
+profit; members of that legion of the non-reputable, to whom Cairo
+offered no home; Levantines, who had fled from that underground world
+where every coin of reputation is falsely minted, refugees from the storm
+of the world's disapproval.  There were Greeks with Austrian names;
+Armenians, speaking Italian as their native tongue; Italians of
+astonishing military skill, whose services were no longer required by
+their offended country; French Pizarros with a romantic outlook, even in
+misery, intent to find new El Dorados; Englishmen, who had cheated at
+cards and had left the Horse Guards for ever behind; Egyptian intriguers,
+who had been banished for being less successful than greater intriguers;
+but also a band of good gallant men of every nation.
+
+Upon all these, during the siege, Mahommed Hassan had been a self-
+appointed spy, and had indirectly added to that knowledge which made
+David's decisive actions to circumvent intrigue and its consequences seem
+almost supernatural.  In his way Mahommed was a great man.  He knew that
+David would endure no spying, and it was creditable to his subtlety and
+skill that he was able to warn his master, without being himself
+suspected of getting information by dark means.  On the palace roof
+Mahommed was happy to-night.  Tomorrow would be a great day, and, since
+the Saadat was to control its destiny, what other end could there be but
+happiness?  Had not the Saadat always ridden over all that had been in
+his way?  Had not he, Mahommed, ever had plenty to eat and drink, and
+money to send to Manfaloot to his father there, and to bribe when bribing
+was needed?  Truly, life was a boon!  With a neboot of dom-wood across
+his knees he sat in the still, moonlit night, peering into that distance
+whence Ebn Ezra Bey and his men must come, the moon above tranquil and
+pleasant and alluring, and the desert beneath, covered as it was with the
+outrages and terrors of war, breathing softly its ancient music, that
+delicate vibrant humming of the latent activities.  In his uncivilised
+soul Mahommed Hassan felt this murmur, and even as he sat waiting to know
+whether a little army would steal out of the south like phantoms into
+this circle the Saadat had drawn round him, he kept humming to himself--
+had he not been, was he not now, an Apollo to numberless houris who had
+looked down at him from behind mooshrabieh screens, or waited for him in
+the palm-grove or the cane-field?  The words of his song were not uttered
+aloud, but yet he sang them silently--
+
+    "Every night long and all night my spirit is moaning and crying
+     O dear gazelle, that has taken away my peace!
+     Ah! if my beloved come not, my eyes will be blinded with weeping
+     Moon of my joy, come to me, hark to the call of my soul!"
+
+Over and over he kept chanting the song.  Suddenly, however, he leaned
+farther forward and strained his ears.  Yes, at last, away to the south-
+east, there was life stirring, men moving--moving quickly.  He got to his
+feet slowly, still listening, stood for a moment motionless, then, with a
+cry of satisfaction, dimly saw a moving mass in the white moonlight far
+over by the river.  Ebn Ezra Bey and his men were coming.  He started
+below, and met David on the way up.  He waited till David had mounted the
+roof, then he pointed.  "Now, Saadat!" he said.
+
+"They have stolen in?"  David peered into the misty whiteness.
+
+They are almost in, Saadat.  Nothing can stop them now."
+
+"It is well done.  Go and ask Ebn Ezra effendi to come hither," he said.
+
+Suddenly a shot was fired, then a hoarse shout came over the desert, then
+there was silence again.
+
+"They are in, Saadat," said Mahommed Hassan.
+
+                    .......................
+
+Day broke over a hazy plain.  On both sides of the Nile the river mist
+spread wide, and the army of Ali Wad Hei and the defending forces were
+alike veiled from each other and from the desert world beyond.  Down the
+river for scores of miles the mist was heavy, and those who moved within
+it and on the waters of the Nile could not see fifty feet ahead.  Yet
+through this heavy veil there broke gently a little fleet of phantom
+vessels, the noise of the paddle-wheels and their propellers muffled as
+they moved slowly on.  Never had vessels taken such risks on the Nile
+before, never had pilots trusted so to instinct, for there were sand-
+banks and ugly drifts of rock here and there.  A safe journey for phantom
+ships; but these armed vessels, filled by men with white, eager faces and
+others with dark Egyptian features, were no phantoms.  They bristled with
+weapons, and armed men crowded every corner of space.  For full two hours
+from the first streak of light they had travelled swiftly, taking chances
+not to be taken save in some desperate moment.  The moment was desperate
+enough, if not for them.  They were going to the relief of besieged men,
+with a message from Nahoum Pasha to Claridge Pasha, and with succour.
+They had looked for a struggle up this river as they neared the
+beleaguered city; but, as they came nearer and nearer, not a gun fired at
+them from the forts on the banks out of the mists.  If they were heard
+they still were safe from the guns, for they could not be seen, and those
+on shore could not know whether they were friend or foe.  Like ghostly
+vessels they passed on, until at last they could hear the stir and murmur
+of life along the banks of the stream.
+
+Boom!  boom!  boom!  Through the mist the guns of the city were pouring
+shot and shell out into Ali Wad Hei's camp, and Ali Wad Hei laughed
+contemptuously.  Surely now the Inglesi was altogether mad, and to-day,
+this day after prayers at noon, he should be shot like a mad dog, for
+yesterday's defeat had turned some of his own adherent sheikhs into angry
+critics.  He would not wait for starvation to compel the infidel to
+surrender.  He would win freedom to deal in human flesh and blood, and
+make slave-markets where he willed, and win glory for the Lord Mahomet,
+by putting this place to the sword; and, when it was over, he would have
+the Inglesi's head carried on a pole through the city for the faithful to
+mock at, a target for the filth of the streets.  So, by the will of
+Allah, it should be done!
+
+Boom!  boom!  boom!  The Inglesi was certainly mad, for never had there
+been so much firing in any long day in all the siege as in this brief
+hour this morning.  It was the act of a fool, to fire his shot and shell
+into the mist without aim, without a clear target.  Ali Wad Hei scorned
+to make any reply with his guns, but sat in desultory counsel with his
+sheikhs, planning what should be done when the mists had cleared away.
+But yesterday evening the Arab chief had offered to give the Inglesi life
+if he would surrender and become a Muslim, and swear by the Lord Mahomet;
+but late in the night he had received a reply which left only one choice,
+and that was to disembowel the infidel, and carry his head aloft on a
+spear.  The letter he had received ran thus in Arabic:
+
+     "To Ali Wad Hei and All with Him:
+
+     "We are here to live or to die as God wills, and not as ye will.  I
+     have set my feet on the rock, and not by threats of any man shall I
+     be moved.  But I say that for all the blood that ye have shed here
+     there will be punishment, and for the slaves which ye have slain or
+     sold there will be high price paid.  Ye have threatened the city and
+     me--take us if ye can.  Ye are seven to one.  Why falter all these
+     months?  If ye will not come to us, we shall come to you, rebellious
+     ones, who have drawn the sword against your lawful ruler, the
+     Effendina.
+                                   "CLARIDGE PASHA"
+
+It was a rhetorical document couched in the phraseology they best
+understood; and if it begat derision, it also begat anger; and the
+challenge David had delivered would be met when the mists had lifted from
+the river and the plain.  But when the first thinning of the mists began,
+when the sun began to dissipate the rolling haze, Ali Wad Hei and his
+rebel sheikhs were suddenly startled by rifle-fire at close quarters, by
+confused noises, and the jar and roar of battle.  Now the reason for the
+firing of the great guns was plain.  The noise was meant to cover the
+advance of David's men.  The little garrison, which had done no more than
+issue in sorties, was now throwing its full force on the enemy in a last
+desperate endeavour.  It was either success or absolute destruction.
+David was staking all, with the last of his food, the last of his
+ammunition, the last of his hopes.  All round the field the movement was
+forward, till the circle had widened to the enemy's lines; while at the
+old defences were only handfuls of men.  With scarce a cry David's men
+fell on the unprepared foe; and he himself, on a grey Arab, a mark for
+any lance or spear and rifle, rode upon that point where Ali Wad Hei's
+tent was set.
+
+But after the first onset, in which hundreds were killed, there began the
+real noise of battle--fierce shouting, the shrill cries of wounded and
+maddened horses as they struck with their feet, and bit as fiercely at
+the fighting foe as did their masters.  The mist cleared slowly, and,
+when it had wholly lifted, the fight was spread over every part of the
+field of siege.  Ali Wad Hei's men had gathered themselves together after
+the first deadly onslaught, and were fighting fiercely, shouting the
+Muslim battle-cry, "Allah hu achbar!"  Able to bring up reinforcements,
+the great losses at first sustained were soon made up, and the sheer
+weight of numbers gave them courage and advantage.  By rushes with lance
+and sword and rifle they were able, at last, to drive David's men back
+upon their old defences with loss.  Then charge upon charge ensued, and
+each charge, if it cost them much, cost the besieged more, by reason of
+their fewer numbers.  At one point, however, the besieged became again
+the attacking party.  This was where Achmet Pasha had command.  His men
+on one side of the circle, as Ebn Ezra Bey's men on the other, fought
+with a valour as desperate as the desert ever saw.  But David, galloping
+here and there to order, to encourage, to prevent retreat at one point,
+or to urge attack at another, saw that the doom of his gallant force was
+certain; for the enemy were still four to one, in spite of the carnage of
+the first attack.  Bullets hissed past him.  One carried away a button,
+one caught the tip of his ear, one pierced the fez he wore; but he felt
+nothing of this, saw nothing.  He was buried in the storm of battle
+preparing for the end, for the final grim defence, when his men would
+retreat upon the one last strong fort, and there await their fate.  From
+this absorption he was roused by Lacey, who came galloping towards him.
+
+"They've come, Saadat, they've come at last!  We're saved--oh, my God,
+you bet we're all right now!  See!  See, Saadat!"
+
+David saw.  Five steamers carrying the Egyptian flag were bearing around
+the point where the river curved below the town, and converging upon
+David's small fleet.  Presently the steamers opened fire, to encourage
+the besieged, who replied with frenzied shouts of joy, and soon there
+poured upon the sands hundreds of men in the uniform of the Effendina.
+These came forward at the double, and, with a courage which nothing could
+withstand, the whole circle spread out again upon the discomfited tribes
+of Ali Wad Hei.  Dismay, confusion, possessed the Arabs.  Their river-
+watchers had failed them, God had hidden His face from them; and when Ali
+Wad Hei and three of his emirs turned and rode into the desert, their
+forces broke and ran also, pursued by the relentless men who had suffered
+the tortures of siege so long.  The chase was short, however, for they
+were desert folk, and they returned to loot the camp which had menaced
+them so long.
+
+Only the new-comers, Nahoum's men, carried the hunt far; and they brought
+back with them a body which their leader commanded to be brought to a
+great room of the palace.  Towards sunset David and Ebn Ezra Bey and
+Lacey came together to this room.  The folds of loose linen were lifted
+from the face, and all three looked at it long in silence.  At last Lacey
+spoke:
+
+"He got what he wanted; the luck was with him.  It's better than
+Leperland."
+
+"In the bosom of Allah there is peace," said Ebn Ezra.  "It is well with
+Achmet."
+
+With misty eyes David stooped and took the dead man's hand in his for a
+moment.  Then he rose to his feet and turned away.
+
+"And Nahoum also--and Nahoum," he said presently.  "Read this," he added,
+and put a letter from Nahoum into Ebn Ezra's hand.
+
+Lacey reverently covered Achmet's face.  "Say, he got what he wanted," he
+said again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+THE LOOM OF DESTINY
+
+It was many a day since the Duchess of Snowdon had seen a sunrise, and
+the one on which she now gazed from the deck of the dahabieh Nefert,
+filled her with a strange new sense of discovery and revelation.  Her
+perceptions were arrested and a little confused, and yet the undercurrent
+of feeling was one of delight and rejuvenation.  Why did this sunrise
+bring back, all at once, the day when her one lost child was born, and
+she looked out of the windows of Snowdon Hall, as she lay still and
+nerveless, and thought how wonderful and sweet and green was the world
+she saw and the sky that walled it round?  Sunrise over the Greek Temple
+of Philae and the splendid ruins of a farther time towering beside it!
+In her sight were the wide, islanded Nile, where Cleopatra loitered with
+Antony, the foaming, crashing cataracts above, the great quarries from
+which ancient temples had been hewed, unfinished obelisks and vast blocks
+of stone left where bygone workmen had forsaken them, when the invader
+came and another dynasty disappeared into that partial oblivion from
+which the Egyptian still emerges triumphant over all his conquerors,
+unchanged in form and feature.  Something of its meaning got into her
+mind.
+
+"I wonder what Windlehurst would think of it.  He always had an eye for
+things like that," she murmured; and then caught her breath, as she
+added: "He always liked beauty."  She looked at her wrinkled, childish
+hands.  "But sunsets never grow old," she continued, with no apparent
+relevance.  "La, la, we were young once!"
+
+Her eyes were lost again in the pinkish glow spreading over the grey-
+brown sand of the desert, over the palm-covered island near.  "And now
+it's others' turn, or ought to be," she murmured.
+
+She looked to where, not far away, Hylda stood leaning over the railing
+of the dahabieh, her eyes fixed in reverie on the farthest horizon line
+of the unpeopled, untravelled plain of sand.
+
+"No, poor thing, it's not her turn," she added, as Hylda, with a long
+sigh, turned and went below.  Tears gathered in her pale blue eyes.  "Not
+yet--with Eglington alive.  And perhaps it would be best if the other
+never came back.  I could have made the world better worth living in if
+I had had the chance--and I wouldn't have been a duchess!  La!  La!"
+
+She relapsed into reverie, an uncommon experience for her; and her mind
+floated indefinitely from one thing to another, while she was half
+conscious of the smell of coffee permeating the air, and of the low
+resonant notes of the Nubian boys, as, with locked shoulders, they
+scrubbed the decks of a dahabieh near by with hempshod feet.
+
+Presently, however, she was conscious of another sound--the soft clip of
+oars, joined to the guttural, explosive song of native rowers; and,
+leaning over the rail, she saw a boat draw alongside the Nefert.  From it
+came the figure of Nahoum Pasha, who stepped briskly on deck, in his
+handsome face a light which flashed an instant meaning to her.
+
+"I know--I know!  Claridge Pasha--you have heard?" she said excitedly,
+as he came to her.
+
+He smiled and nodded.  "A messenger has arrived.  Within a few hours he
+should be here."
+
+"Then it was all false that he was wounded--ah, that horrible story of
+his death!"
+
+"Bismillah, it was not all false!  The night before the great battle he
+was slightly wounded in the side.  He neglected it, and fever came on;
+but he survived.  His first messengers to us were killed, and that is why
+the news of the relief came so late.  But all is well at last.  I have
+come to say so to Lady Eglington--even before I went to the Effendina."
+He made a gesture towards a huge and gaily-caparisoned dahabieh not far
+away.  "Kaid was right about coming here.  His health is better.  He
+never doubted Claridge Pasha's return; it was une idee fixe.  He believes
+a magic hand protects the Saadat, and that, adhering to him, he himself
+will carry high the flower of good fortune and live for ever.  Kismet!  I
+will not wait to see Lady Eglington.  I beg to offer to her my
+congratulations on the triumph of her countryman."
+
+His words had no ulterior note; but there was a shadow in his eyes which
+in one not an Oriental would have seemed sympathy.
+
+"Pasha, Pasha!" the Duchess called after him, as he turned to leave;
+"tell me, is there any news from England--from the Government?"
+
+"From Lord Eglington?  No," Nahoum answered meaningly.  "I wrote to him.
+Did the English Government desire to send a message to Claridge Pasha,
+if the relief was accomplished?  That is what I asked.  But there is no
+word.  Malaish, Egypt will welcome him!"
+
+She followed his eyes.  Two score of dahabiehs lay along the banks of the
+Nile, and on the shore were encampments of soldiers, while flags were
+flying everywhere.  Egypt had followed the lead of the Effendina.
+Claridge Pasha's star was in its zenith.
+
+As Nahoum's boat was rowed away, Hylda came on deck again, and the
+Duchess hastened to her.  Hylda caught the look in her face.  "What has
+happened?  Is there news?  Who has been here?" she asked.
+
+The Duchess took her hands.  "Nahoum has gone to tell Prince Kaid.  He
+came to you with the good news first," she said with a flutter.
+
+She felt Hylda's hands turn cold.  A kind of mist filled the dark eyes,
+and the slim, beautiful figure swayed slightly.  An instant only, and
+then the lips smiled, and Hylda said in a quavering voice: "They will be
+so glad in England."
+
+"Yes, yes, my darling, that is what Nahoum said."  She gave Nahoum's
+message to her.  "Now they'll make him a peer, I suppose, after having
+deserted him.  So English!"
+
+She did not understand why Hylda's hands trembled so, why so strange a
+look came into her face, but, in an instant, the rare and appealing eyes
+shone again with a light of agitated joy, and suddenly Hylda leaned over
+and kissed her cheek.
+
+"Smell the coffee," she said with assumed gaiety.  "Doesn't fair-and-
+sixty want her breakfast?  Sunrise is a splendid tonic."  She laughed
+feverishly.
+
+"My darling, I hadn't seen the sun rise in thirty years, not since the
+night I first met Windlehurst at a Foreign Office ball."
+
+"You have always been great friends?"  Hylda stole a look at her.
+
+"That's the queer part of it; I was so stupid, and he so clever.  But
+Windlehurst has a way of letting himself down to your level.  He always
+called me Betty after my boy died, just as if I was his equal.  La, la,
+but I was proud when he first called me that--the Prime Minister of
+England.  I'm going to watch the sun rise again to-morrow, my darling.  I
+didn't know it was so beautiful, and gave one such an appetite."  She
+broke a piece of bread, and, not waiting to butter it, almost stuffed it
+into her mouth.
+
+Hylda leaned over and pressed her arm.  "What a good mother Betty it is!"
+she said tenderly.
+
+Presently they were startled by the shrill screaming of a steamer
+whistle, followed by the churning of the paddles, as she drove past and
+drew to the bank near them.
+
+"It is a steamer from Cairo, with letters, no doubt," said Hylda; and the
+Duchess nodded assent, and covertly noted her look, for she knew that no
+letters had arrived from Eglington since Hylda had left England.
+
+A half-hour later, as the Duchess sat on deck, a great straw hat tied
+under her chin with pale-blue ribbons, like a child of twelve, she was
+startled by seeing the figure of a farmer-looking person with a shock of
+grey-red hair, a red face, and with great blue eyes, appear before her in
+the charge of Hylda's dragoman.
+
+"This has come to speak with my lady," the dragoman said, "but my lady is
+riding into the desert there."  He pointed to the sands.
+
+The Duchess motioned the dragoman away, and scanned the face of the new-
+comer shrewdly.  Where had she seen this strange-looking English peasant,
+with the rolling walk of a sailor?
+
+"What is your name, and where do you come from?" she asked, not without
+anxiety, for there was something ominous and suggestive in the old man's
+face.
+
+"I come from Hamley, in England, and my name is Soolsby, your grace.  I
+come to see my Lady Eglington."
+
+Now she remembered him.  She had seen him in Hamley more than once.
+
+"You have come far; have you important news for her ladyship?  Is there
+anything wrong?" she asked with apparent composure, but with heavy
+premonition.
+
+"Ay, news that counts, I bring," answered Soolsby, "or I hadn't come this
+long way.  'Tis a long way at sixty-five."
+
+"Well, yes, at our age it is a long way," rejoined the Duchess in a
+friendly voice, suddenly waving away the intervening air of class, for
+she was half a peasant at heart.
+
+"Ay, and we both come for the same end, I suppose," Soolsby added; "and a
+costly business it is.  But what matters, so be that you help her
+ladyship and I help Our Man."
+
+"And who is 'Our Man'?" was the rejoinder.  "Him that's coming safe here
+from the South--David Claridge," he answered.  "Ay, 'twas the first thing
+I heard when I landed here, me that be come all these thousand miles to
+see him, if so be he was alive."  Just then he caught sight of Kate
+Heaver climbing the stair to the deck where they were.  His face flushed;
+he hurried forward and gripped her by the arm, as her feet touched the
+upper deck.  "Kate-ay, 'tis Kate!" he cried.  Then he let go her arm and
+caught a hand in both of his and fondled it.  "Ay, ay, 'tis Kate!"  "What
+is it brings you, Soolsby?" Kate asked anxiously.
+
+"'Tis not Jasper, and 'tis not the drink-ay, I've been sober since, ever
+since, Kate, lass," he answered stoutly.  "Quick, quick, tell me what it
+is!" she said, frowning.  "You've not come here for naught, Soolsby."
+
+Still holding her hand, he leaned over and whispered in her ear.  For an
+instant she stood as though transfixed, and then, with a curious muffled
+cry, broke away from him and turned to go below.
+
+"Keep your mouth shut, lass, till proper time," he called after her, as
+she descended the steps hastily again.  Then he came slowly back to the
+Duchess.
+
+He looked her in the face--he was so little like a peasant, so much more
+like a sailor here with his feet on the deck of a floating thing.  "Your
+grace is a good friend to her ladyship," he said at last deliberately,
+"and 'tis well that you tell her ladyship.  As good a friend to her
+you've been, I doubt not, as that I've been to him that's coming from
+beyond and away."
+
+"Go on, man, go on.  I want to know what startled Heaver yonder, what you
+have come to say."
+
+"I beg pardon, your grace.  One doesn't keep good news waiting, and 'tis
+not good news for her ladyship I bring, even if it be for Claridge Pasha,
+for there was no love lost 'twixt him and second-best lordship that's
+gone."
+
+"Speak, man, speak it out, and no more riddles," she interrupted sharply.
+
+"Then, he that was my Lord Eglington is gone foreign--he is dead," he
+said slowly.
+
+The Duchess fell back in her chair.  For an instant the desert, the
+temples, the palms, the Nile waters faded, and she was in some middle
+world, in which Soolsby's voice seemed coming muffled and deep across a
+dark flood; then she recovered herself, and gave a little cry, not unlike
+that which Kate gave a few moments before, partly of pain, partly of
+relief.
+
+"Ay, he's dead and buried, too, and in the Quaker churchyard.  Miss
+Claridge would have it so.  And none in Hamley said nay, not one."
+
+The Duchess murmured to herself.  Eglington was dead--Eglington was dead
+--Eglington was dead!  And David Claridge was coming out of the desert,
+was coming to-day-now!
+
+"How did it happen?" she asked, faintly, at last.
+
+"Things went wrong wi' him--bad wrong in Parliament and everywhere, and
+he didn't take it well.  He stood the world off like-ay, he had no temper
+for black days.  He shut himself up at Hamley in his chemical place, like
+his father, like his father before him.  When the week-end came, there he
+was all day and night among his bottles and jars and wires.  He was after
+summat big in experiment for explosives, so the papers said, and so he
+said himself before he died, to Miss Claridge--ay, 'twas her he deceived
+and treated cruel, that come to him when he was shattered by his
+experimenting.  No patience, he had at last--and reckless in his chemical
+place, and didn't realise what his hands was doing.  'Twas so he told
+her, that forgave him all his deceit, and held him in her arms when he
+died.  Not many words he had to speak; but he did say that he had never
+done any good to any one--ay, I was standing near behind his bed and
+heard all, for I was thinking of her alone with him, and so I would be
+with her, and she would have it so.  Ay, and he said that he had misused
+cruel her that had loved him, her ladyship, that's here.  He said he
+had misused her because he had never loved her truly, only pride and
+vainglory being in his heart.  Then he spoke summat to her that was there
+to forgive him and help him over the stile 'twixt this field and it
+that's Beyond and Away, which made her cry out in pain and say that he
+must fix his thoughts on other things.  And she prayed out loud for him,
+for he would have no parson there.  She prayed and prayed as never priest
+or parson prayed, and at last he got quiet and still, and, when she
+stopped praying, he did not speak or open his eyes for a longish while.
+But when the old clock on the stable was striking twelve, he opened his
+eyes wide, and when it had stopped, he said: 'It is always twelve by the
+clock that stops at noon.  I've done no good.  I've earned my end.' He
+looked as though he was waiting for the clock to go on striking, half
+raising himself up in bed, with Miss Faith's arm under his head.  He
+whispered to her then--he couldn't speak by this time.  'It's twelve
+o'clock,' he said.  Then there came some words I've heard the priest say
+at Mass, 'Vanitas, Vanitatum,'--that was what he said.  And her he'd lied
+to, there with him, laying his head down on the pillow, as if he was her
+child going to sleep.  So, too, she had him buried by her father, in the
+Quaker burying-ground--ay, she is a saint on earth, I warrant."
+
+For a moment after he had stopped the Duchess did not speak, but kept
+untying and tying the blue ribbons under her chin, her faded eyes still
+fastened on him, burning with the flame of an emotion which made them
+dark and young again.
+
+"So, it's all over," she said, as though to herself.  "They were all
+alike, from old Broadbrim, the grandfather, down to this one, and back to
+William the Conqueror."
+
+"Like as peas in a pod," exclaimed Soolsby--"all but one, all but one,
+and never satisfied with what was in their own garden, but peeking,
+peeking beyond the hedge, and climbing and getting a fall.  That's what
+they've always been evermore."
+
+His words aroused the Duchess, and the air became a little colder about
+her-after all, the division between the classes and the masses must be
+kept, and the Eglingtons were no upstarts.  "You will say nothing about
+this till I give you leave to speak," she commanded.  "I must tell her
+ladyship."
+
+Soolsby drew himself up a little, nettled at her tone.  "It is your
+grace's place to tell her ladyship," he responded; "but I've taken ten
+years' savings to come to Egypt, and not to do any one harm, but good,
+if so be I might."
+
+The Duchess relented at once.  She got to her feet as quickly as she
+could, and held out her hand to him.  "You are a good man, and a friend
+worth having, I know, and I shall like you to be my friend, Mr. Soolsby,"
+she said impulsively.
+
+He took her hand and shook it awkwardly, his lips working.  "Your grace,
+I understand.  I've got naught to live for except my friends.  Money's
+naught, naught's naught, if there isn't a friend to feel a crunch at his
+heart when summat bad happens to you.  I'd take my affydavy that there's
+no better friend in the world than your grace."
+
+She smiled at him.  "And so we are friends, aren't we?  And I am to tell
+her ladyship, and you are to say 'naught.'
+
+"But to the Egyptian, to him, your grace, it is my place to speak--to
+Claridge Pasha, when he comes."  The Duchess looked at him quizzically.
+"How does Lord Eglington's death concern Claridge Pasha?" she asked
+rather anxiously.  Had there been gossip about Hylda?  Had the public got
+a hint of the true story of her flight, in spite of all Windlehurst had
+done?  Was Hylda's name smirched, now, when all would be set right?  Had
+everything come too late, as it were?
+
+"There's two ways that his lordship's death concerns Claridge Pasha,"
+answered Soolsby shrewdly, for though he guessed the truth concerning
+Hylda and David, his was not a leaking tongue.  "There's two ways it
+touches him.  There'll be a new man in the Foreign Office--Lord Eglington
+was always against Claridge Pasha; and there's matters of land betwixt
+the two estates--matters of land that's got to be settled now," he
+continued, with determined and successful evasion.
+
+The Duchess was deceived.  "But you will not tell Claridge Pasha until I
+have told her ladyship and I give you leave?  Promise that," she urged.
+
+"I will not tell him until then," he answered.  "Look, look, your grace,"
+he added, suddenly pointing towards the southern horizon, "there he
+comes!  Ay, 'tis Our Man, I doubt not--Our Man evermore!"
+
+Miles away there appeared on the horizon a dozen camels being ridden
+towards Assouan.
+
+"Our Man evermore," repeated the Duchess, with a trembling smile.  "Yes,
+it is surely he.  See, the soldiers are moving.  They're going to ride
+out to meet him."  She made a gesture towards the far shore where Kaid's
+men were saddling their horses, and to Nahoum's and Kaid's dahabiehs,
+where there was a great stir.
+
+"There's one from Hamley will meet them first," Soolsby said, and pointed
+to where Hylda, in the desert, was riding towards the camels coming out
+of the south.
+
+The Duchess threw up her hands.  "Dear me, dear me," she said in
+distress, "if she only knew!"
+
+"There's thousands of women that'd ride out mad to meet him," said
+Soolsby carefully; "women that likes to see an Englishman that's done his
+duty--ay, women and men, that'd ride hard to welcome him back from the
+grave.  Her ladyship's as good a patriot as any," he added, watching the
+Duchess out of the corners of his eyes, his face turned to the desert.
+
+The Duchess looked at him quizzically, and was satisfied with her
+scrutiny.  "You're a man of sense," she replied brusquely, and gathered
+up her skirts.  "Find me a horse or a donkey, and I'll go too," she added
+whimsically.  "Patriotism is such a nice sentiment."
+
+For David and Lacey the morning had broken upon a new earth.  Whatever of
+toil and tribulation the future held in store, this day marked a step
+forward in the work to which David had set his life.  A way had been
+cloven through the bloody palisades of barbarism, and though the dark
+races might seek to hold back the forces which drain the fens, and build
+the bridges, and make the desert blossom as the rose, which give liberty
+and preserve life, the good end was sure and near, whatever of rebellion
+and disorder and treachery intervened.  This was the larger, graver
+issue; but they felt a spring in the blood, and their hearts were
+leaping, because of the thought that soon they would clasp hands again
+with all from which they had been exiled.
+
+"Say, Saadat, think of it: a bed with four feet, and linen sheets, and
+sleeping till any time in the morning, and, If you please, sir,
+breakfast's on the table.' Say, it's great, and we're in it!"
+
+David smiled.  "Thee did very well, friend, without such luxuries.  Thee
+is not skin and bone."
+
+Lacey mopped his forehead.  "Well, I've put on a layer or two since the
+relief.  It's being scared that takes the flesh off me.  I never was
+intended for the 'stricken field.'  Poetry and the hearth-stone was my
+real vocation--and a bit of silver mining to blow off steam with," he
+added with a chuckle.
+
+David laughed and tapped his arm.  "That is an old story now, thy
+cowardice.  Thee should be more original.
+
+"It's worth not being original, Saadat, to hear you thee and thou me as
+you used to do.  It's like old times--the oldest, first times.  You've
+changed a lot, Saadat."
+
+"Not in anything that matters, I hope."
+
+"Not in anything that matters to any one that matters.  To me it's the
+same as it ever was, only more so.  It isn't that, for you are you.  But
+you've had disappointment, trouble, hard nuts to crack, and all you could
+do to escape the rocks being rolled down the Egyptian hill onto you; and
+it's left its mark."
+
+"Am I grown so different?"
+
+Lacey's face shone under the look that was turned towards him.  "Say,
+Saadat, you're the same old red sandstone; but I missed the thee and
+thou.  I sort of hankered after it; it gets me where I'm at home with
+myself."
+
+David laughed drily.  "Well, perhaps I've missed something in you.  Thee
+never says now--not since thee went south a year ago, 'Well, give my love
+to the girls.'  Something has left its mark, friend," he added teasingly;
+for his spirits were boyish to-day; he was living in the present.  There
+had gone from his eyes and from the lines of his figure the melancholy
+which Hylda had remarked when he was in England.
+
+"Well, now, I never noticed," rejoined Lacey.  "That's got me.  Looks as
+if I wasn't as friendly as I used to be, doesn't it?  But I am--I am,
+Saadat."
+
+"I thought that the widow in Cairo, perhaps--" Lacey chuckled.  "Say,
+perhaps it was--cute as she can be, maybe, wouldn't like it, might be
+prejudiced."
+
+Suddenly David turned sharply to Lacey.  "Thee spoke of silver mining
+just now.  I owe thee something like two hundred thousand pounds, I
+think--Egypt and I."
+
+Lacey winked whimsically at himself under the rim of his helmet.  "Are
+you drawing back from those concessions, Saadat?" he asked with apparent
+ruefulness.
+
+"Drawing back?  No!  But does thee think they are worth--"
+
+Lacey assumed an injured air.  "If a man that's made as much money as me
+can't be trusted to look after a business proposition--"
+
+"Oh, well, then!"
+
+"Say, Saadat, I don't want you to think I've taken a mean advantage of
+you; and if--"
+
+David hastened to put the matter right.  "No, no; thee must be the
+judge!"  He smiled sceptically.  "In any case, thee has done a good deed
+in a great way, and it will do thee no harm in the end.  In one way the
+investment will pay a long interest, as long as the history of Egypt
+runs.  Ah, see, the houses of Assouan, the palms, the river, the masts of
+the dahabiehs!"
+
+Lacey quickened his camel's steps, and stretched out a hand to the
+inviting distance.  "'My, it's great," he said, and his eyes were
+blinking with tears.  Presently he pointed.  "There's a woman riding to
+meet us, Saa dat.  Golly, can't she ride!  She means to be in it--to
+salute the returning brave."
+
+He did not glance at David.  If he had done so, he would have seen that
+David's face had taken on a strange look, just such a look as it wore
+that night in the monastery when he saw Hylda in a vision and heard her
+say: "Speak, speak to me!"
+
+There had shot into David's mind the conviction that the woman riding
+towards them was Hylda.  Hylda, the first to welcome him back, Hylda--
+Lady Eglington!  Suddenly his face appeared to tighten and grow thin.
+It was all joy and torture at once.  He had fought this fight out with
+himself--had he not done so?  Had he not closed his heart to all but duty
+and Egypt?  Yet there she was riding out of the old life, out of Hamley,
+and England, and all that had happened in Cairo, to meet him.  Nearer and
+nearer she came.  He could not see the face, but yet he knew.  He
+quickened his camel and drew ahead of Lacey.  Lacey did not understand,
+he did not recognise Hylda as yet; but he knew by instinct the Saadat's
+wishes, and he motioned the others to ride more slowly, while he and they
+watched horsemen coming out from Assouan towards them.
+
+David urged his camel on.  Presently he could distinguish the features of
+the woman riding towards him.  It was Hylda.  His presentiment, his
+instinct had been right.  His heart beat tumultuously, his hand trembled,
+he grew suddenly weak; but he summoned up his will, and ruled himself to
+something like composure.  This, then, was his home-coming from the far
+miseries and trials and battle-fields--to see her face before all others,
+to hear her voice first.  What miracle had brought this thing to pass,
+this beautiful, bitter, forbidden thing?  Forbidden!  Whatever the cause
+of her coming, she must not see what he felt for her.  He must deal
+fairly by her and by Eglington; he must be true to that real self which
+had emerged from the fiery trial in the monastery.  Bronzed as he was,
+his face showed no paleness; but, as he drew near her, it grew pinched
+and wan from the effort at self-control.  He set his lips and rode on,
+until he could see her eyes looking into his--eyes full of that which he
+had never seen in any eyes in all the world.
+
+What had been her feelings during that ride in the desert?  She had not
+meant to go out to meet him.  After she heard that he was coming, her
+desire was to get away from all the rest of the world, and be alone with
+her thoughts.  He was coming, he was safe, and her work was done.  What
+she had set out to do was accomplished--to bring him back, if it was
+God's will, out of the jaws of death, for England's sake, for the world's
+sake, for his sake, for her own sake.  For her own sake?  Yes, yes, in
+spite of all, for her own sake.  Whatever lay before, now, for this one
+hour, for this moment of meeting he should be hers.  But meet him, where?
+Before all the world, with a smile of conventional welcome on her lips,
+with the same hand-clasp that any friend and lover of humanity would give
+him?
+
+The desert air blew on her face, keen, sweet, vibrant, thrilling.  What
+he had heard that night at the monastery, the humming life of the land of
+white fire--the desert, the million looms of all the weavers of the world
+weaving, this she heard in the sunlight, with the sand rising like surf
+behind her horse's heels.  The misery and the tyranny and the unrequited
+love were all behind her, the disillusion and the loss and the undeserved
+insult to her womanhood--all, all were sunk away into the unredeemable
+past.  Here, in Egypt, where she had first felt the stir of life's
+passion and pain and penalty, here, now, she lost herself in a beautiful,
+buoyant dream.  She was riding out to meet the one man of all men, hero,
+crusader, rescuer--ah, that dreadful night in the Palace, and Foorgat's
+face!  But he was coming, who had made her live, to whom she had called,
+to whom her soul had spoken in its grief and misery.  Had she ever done
+aught to shame the best that was in herself--and had she not been sorely
+tempted?  Had she not striven to love Eglington even when the worst was
+come, not alone at her own soul's command, but because she knew that this
+man would have it so?  Broken by her own sorrow, she had left England,
+Eglington--all, to keep her pledge to help him in his hour of need, to
+try and save him to the world, if that might be.  So she had come to
+Nahoum, who was binding him down on the bed of torture and of death.  And
+yet, alas!  not herself had conquered Nahoum, but David, as Nahoum had
+said.  She herself had not done this one thing which would have
+compensated for all that she had suffered.  This had not been permitted;
+but it remained that she had come here to do it, and perhaps he would
+understand when he saw her.
+
+Yes, she knew he would understand!  She flung up her head to the sun and
+the pulse-stirring air, and, as she did so, she saw his cavalcade
+approaching.  She was sure it was he, even when he was far off, by the
+same sure instinct that convinced him.  For an instant she hesitated.
+She would turn back, and meet him with the crowd.  Then she looked
+around.  The desert was deserted by all save herself and himself and
+those who were with him.  No.  Her mind was made up.  She would ride
+forward.  She would be the first to welcome him back to life and the
+world.  He and she would meet alone in the desert.  For one minute they
+would be alone, they two, with the world afar, they two, to meet, to
+greet--and to part.  Out of all that Fate had to give of sorrow and loss,
+this one delectable moment, no matter what came after.
+
+"David!" she cried with beating heart, and rode on, harder and harder.
+
+Now she saw him ride ahead of the others.  Ah, he knew that it was she,
+though he could not see her face!  Nearer and nearer.  Now they looked
+into each other's eyes.
+
+She saw him stop his camel and make it kneel for the dismounting.  She
+stopped her horse also, and slid to the ground, and stood waiting, one
+hand upon the horse's neck.  He hastened forward, then stood still, a few
+feet away, his eyes on hers, his helmet off, his brown hair, brown as
+when she first saw it--peril and hardship had not thinned or greyed it.
+For a moment they stood so, for a moment of revealing and understanding,
+but speechless; and then, suddenly, and with a smile infinitely touching,
+she said, as he had heard her say in the monastery--the very words:
+
+"Speak--speak to me!"
+
+He took her hand in his.  "There is no need--I have said all," he
+answered, happiness and trouble at once in his eyes.  Then his face
+grew calmer.  "Thee has made it worth while living on," he added.
+
+She was gaining control of herself also.  "I said that I would come
+when I was needed," she answered less, tremblingly.
+
+"Thee came alone?" he asked gently.
+
+"From Assouan, yes," she said in a voice still unsteady.  "I was riding
+out to be by myself, and then I saw you coming, and I rode on.  I thought
+I should like to be the first to say: 'Well done,' and 'God bless you!'"
+
+He drew in a long breath, then looked at her keenly.  "Lord Eglington is
+in Egypt also?" he asked.
+
+Her face did not change.  She looked him in the eyes.
+
+"No, Eglington would not come to help you.  I came to Nahoum, as I said
+I would."
+
+"Thee has a good memory," he rejoined simply.  "I am a good friend," she
+answered, then suddenly her face flushed up, her breast panted, her eyes
+shone with a brightness almost intolerable to him, and he said in a low,
+shaking voice:
+
+"It is all fighting, all fighting.  We have done our best; and thee has
+made all possible."
+
+"David!" she said in a voice scarce above a whisper.
+
+"Thee and me have far to go," he said in a voice not louder than her own,
+"but our ways may not be the same."
+
+She understood, and a newer life leaped up in her.  She knew that he
+loved her--that was sufficient; the rest would be easier now.  Sacrifice,
+all, would be easier.  To part, yes, and for evermore; but to know that
+she had been truly loved--who could rob her of that?
+
+"See," she said lightly, "your people are waiting--and there, why, there
+is my cousin Lacey.  Tom, oh, Cousin Tom!" she called eagerly.
+
+Lacey rode down on them.  "I swan, but I'm glad," he said, as he dropped
+from his horse.  "Cousin Hylda, I'm blest if I don't feel as if I could
+sing like Aunt Melissa."
+
+"You may kiss me, Cousin Tom," she said, as she took his hands in hers.
+
+He flushed, was embarrassed, then snatched a kiss from her cheek.  "Say,
+I'm in it, ain't I?  And you were in it first, eh, Cousin Hylda?  The
+rest are nowhere--there they come from Assouan, Kaid, Nahoum, and the
+Nubians.  Look at 'em glisten!"
+
+A hundred of Kaid's Nubians in their glittering armour made three sides
+of a quickly moving square, in the centre of which, and a little ahead,
+rode Kaid and Nahoum, while behind the square-in parade and gala dress-
+trooped hundreds of soldiers and Egyptians and natives.
+
+Swiftly the two cavalcades approached each other, the desert ringing with
+the cries of the Bedouins, the Nubians, and the fellaheen.  They met on
+an upland of sand, from which the wide valley of the Nile and its wild
+cataracts could be seen.  As men meet who parted yesterday, Kaid, Nahoum,
+and David met, but Kaid's first quiet words to David had behind them a
+world of meaning:
+
+"I also have come back, Saadat, to whom be the bread that never moulds
+and the water that never stales!" he said, with a look in his face which
+had not been there for many a day.  Superstition had set its mark on him
+--on Claridge Pasha's safety depended his own, that was his belief; and
+the look of this thin, bronzed face, with its living fire, gave him vital
+assurance of length of days.
+
+And David answered: "May thy life be the nursling of Time, Effendina.
+I bring the tribute of the rebel lions once more to thy hand.  What was
+thine, and was lost, is thine once more.  Peace and salaam!"  Between
+Nahoum and David there were no words at first at all.  They shook hands
+like Englishmen, looking into each other's eyes, and with pride of what
+Nahoum, once, in his duplicity, had called "perfect friendship."
+
+Lacey thought of this now as he looked on; and not without a sense of
+irony, he said under his breath, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a
+Christian!"
+
+But in Hylda's look, as it met Nahoum's, there was no doubt--what woman
+doubts the convert whom she thinks she has helped to make?  Meanwhile,
+the Nubians smote their mailed breasts with their swords in honour of
+David and Kaid.
+
+Under the gleaming moon, the exquisite temple of Philae perched on its
+high rock above the river, the fires on the shore, the masts of the
+dahabiehs twinkling with lights, and the barbarous songs floating across
+the water, gave the feeling of past centuries to the scene.  From the
+splendid boat which Kaid had placed at his disposal David looked out upon
+it all, with emotions not yet wholly mastered by the true estimate of
+what this day had brought to him.  With a mind unsettled he listened to
+the natives in the forepart of the boat and on the shore, beating the
+darabukkeh and playing the kemengeh.  Yet it was moving in a mist and on
+a flood of greater happiness than he had ever known.
+
+He did not know as yet that Eglington was gone for ever.  He did not know
+that the winds of time had already swept away all traces of the house of
+ambition which Eglington had sought to build; and that his nimble tongue
+and untrustworthy mind would never more delude and charm, and wanton with
+truth.  He did not know, but within the past hour Hylda knew; and now out
+of the night Soolsby came to tell him.
+
+He was roused from his reverie by Soolsby's voice saying: "Hast nowt to
+say to me, Egyptian?"
+
+It startled him, sounded ghostly in the moonlight; for why should he hear
+Soolsby's voice on the confines of Egypt?  But Soolsby came nearer, and
+stood where the moonlight fell upon him, hat in hand, a rustic modern
+figure in this Oriental world.
+
+David sprang to his feet and grasped the old man by the shoulders.
+"Soolsby, Soolsby," he said, with a strange plaintive-note in his voice,
+yet gladly, too.  "Soolsby, thee is come here to welcome me!  But has
+she not come--Miss Claridge, Soolsby?"
+
+He longed for that true heart which had never failed him, the simple soul
+whose life had been filled by thought and care of him, and whose every
+act had for its background the love of sister for brother--for that was
+their relation in every usual meaning--who, too frail and broken to come
+to him now, waited for him by the old hearthstone.  And so Soolsby, in
+his own way, made him understand; for who knew them both better than this
+old man, who had shared in David's destiny since the fatal day when Lord
+Eglington had married Mercy Claridge in secret, had set in motion a long
+line of tragic happenings?
+
+"Ay, she would have come, she would have come," Soolsby answered, "but
+she was not fit for the journey, and there was little time, my lord."
+
+"Why did thee come, Soolsby?  Only to welcome me back?"
+
+"I come to bring you back to England, to your duty there, my lord."
+
+The first time Soolsby had used the words "my lord," David had scarcely
+noticed it, but its repetition struck him strangely.
+
+"Here, sometimes they call me Pasha and Saadat, but I am not 'my lord,'"
+he said.
+
+"Ay, but you are my lord, Egyptian, as sure as I've kept my word to you
+that I'd drink no more, ay, on my sacred honour.  So you are my lord; you
+are Lord Eglington, my lord."
+
+David stood rigid and almost unblinking as Soolsby told his tale,
+beginning with the story of Eglington's death, and going back all the
+years to the day of Mercy Claridge's marriage.
+
+"And him that never was Lord Eglington, your own father's son, is dead
+and gone, my lord; and you are come into your rights at last."  This was
+the end of the tale.
+
+For a long time David stood looking into the sparkling night before him,
+speechless and unmoving, his hands clasped behind him, his head bent
+forward, as though in a dream.
+
+How, all in an instant, had life changed for him!  How had Soolsby's tale
+of Eglington's death filled him with a pity deeper than he had ever felt-
+the futile, bitter, unaccomplished life, the audacious, brilliant genius
+quenched, a genius got from the same source as his own resistless energy
+and imagination, from the same wild spring.  Gone--all gone, with only
+pity to cover him, unloved, unloving, unbemoaned, save by the Quaker girl
+whose true spirit he had hurt, save by the wife whom he had cruelly
+wronged and tortured; and pity was the thing that moved them both,
+unfathomable and almost maternal, in that sense of motherhood which,
+in spite of love or passion, is behind both, behind all, in every true
+woman's life.
+
+At last David spoke.
+
+"Who knows of all this--of who I am, Soolsby?"
+
+"Lady Eglington and myself, my lord."
+
+"Only she and you?"
+
+"Only us two, Egyptian."
+
+"Then let it be so--for ever."
+
+Soolsby was startled, dumfounded.
+
+"But you will take your title and estates, my lord; you will take the
+place which is your own."
+
+"And prove my grandfather wrong?  Had he not enough sorrow?  And change
+my life, all to please thee, Soolsby?"
+
+He took the old man's shoulders in his hands again.  "Thee has done thy
+duty as few in this world, Soolsby, and given friendship such as few
+give.  But thee must be content.  I am David Claridge, and so shall
+remain ever."
+
+"Then, since he has no male kin, the title dies, and all that's his will
+go to her ladyship," Soolsby rejoined sourly.
+
+"Does thee grudge her ladyship what was his?"
+
+"I grudge her what is yours, my lord--"
+
+Suddenly Soolsby paused, as though a new thought had come to him, and he
+nodded to himself in satisfaction.  "Well, since you will have it so, it
+will be so, Egyptian; but it is a queer fuddle, all of it; and where's
+the way out, tell me that, my lord?"
+
+David spoke impatiently.  "Call me 'my lord' no more.  .  .  .  But I
+will go back to England to her that's waiting at the Red Mansion, and you
+will remember, Soolsby--"
+
+Slowly the great flotilla of dahabiehs floated with the strong current
+down towards Cairo, the great sails swelling to the breeze that blew from
+the Libyan Hills.  Along the bank of the Nile thousands of Arabs and
+fellaheen crowded to welcome "the Saadat," bringing gifts of dates and
+eggs and fowls and dourha and sweetmeats, and linen cloth; and even in
+the darkness and in the trouble that was on her, and the harrowing regret
+that she had not been with Eglington in his last hour--she little knew
+what Eglington had said to Faith in that last hour--Hylda's heart was
+soothed by the long, loud tribute paid to David.
+
+As she sat in the evening light, David and Lacey came, and were received
+by the Duchess of Snowdon, who could only say to David, as she held his
+hand, "Windlehurst sent his regards to you, his loving regards.  He was
+sure you would come home--come home.  He wished he were in power for your
+sake."
+
+So, for a few moments she talked vaguely, and said at last: "But Lady
+Eglington, she will be glad to see you, such old friends as you are,
+though not so old as Windlehurst and me--thirty years, over thirty la,
+la!"
+
+They turned to go to Hylda, and came face to face with Kate Heaver.
+
+Kate looked at David as one would look who saw a lost friend return from
+the dead.  His eyes lighted, he held out his hand to her.
+
+"It is good to see thee here," he said gently.  "And 'tis the cross-roads
+once again, sir," she rejoined.
+
+"Thee means thee will marry Jasper?"
+
+"Ay, I will marry Jasper now," she answered.  "It has been a long
+waiting."
+
+"It could not be till now," she responded.
+
+David looked at her reflectively, and said: "By devious ways the human
+heart comes home.  One can only stand in the door and wait.  He has been
+patient."
+
+"I have been patient, too," she answered.
+
+As the Duchess disappeared with David, a swift change came over Lacey.
+He spun round on one toe, and, like a boy of ten, careered around the
+deck to the tune of a negro song.
+
+"Say, things are all right in there with them two, and it's my turn now,"
+he said.  "Cute as she can be, and knows the game!  Twice a widow, and
+knows the game!  Waiting, she is down in Cairo, where the orange blossom
+blows.  I'm in it; we're all in it--every one of us.  Cousin Hylda's free
+now, and I've got no past worth speaking of; and, anyhow, she'll
+understand, down there in Cairo.  Cute as she can be--"
+
+Suddenly he swung himself down to the deck below.  "The desert's the
+place for me to-night," he said.  Stepping ashore, he turned to where the
+Duchess stood on the deck, gazing out into the night.  "Well, give my
+love to the girls," he called, waving a hand upwards, as it were to the
+wide world, and disappeared into the alluring whiteness.
+
+"I've got to get a key-thought," he muttered to himself, as he walked
+swiftly on, till only faint sounds came to him from the riverside.  In
+the letter he had written to Hylda, which was the turning-point of all
+for her, he had spoken of these "key-thoughts."  With all the
+childishness he showed at times, he had wisely felt his way into spheres
+where life had depth and meaning.  The desert had justified him to
+himself and before the spirits of departed peoples, who wandered over the
+sands, until at last they became sand also, and were blown hither and
+thither, to make beds for thousands of desert wayfarers, or paths for
+camels' feet, or a blinding storm to overwhelm the traveller and the
+caravan; Life giving and taking, and absorbing and destroying, and
+destroying and absorbing, till the circle of human existence wheel
+to the full, and the task of Time be accomplished.
+
+On the gorse-grown common above Hamley, David and Faith, and David's
+mother Mercy, had felt the same soul of things stirring--in the green
+things of green England, in the arid wastes of the Libyan desert, on the
+bosom of the Nile, where Mahommed Hassan now lay in a nugger singing a
+song of passion, Nature, with burning voice, murmuring down the unquiet
+world its message of the Final Peace through the innumerable years.
+
+
+
+
+GLOSSARY
+
+Aiwa----Yes.
+Allah hu Achbar----God is most Great.
+Al'mah----Female professional singers, signifying "a learned female."
+Ardab----A measure equivalent to five English bushels.
+
+Backsheesh----Tip, douceur.
+Balass----Earthen vessel for carrying water.
+Bdsha----Pasha.
+Bersim----Clover.
+Bismillah----In the name of God.
+Bowdb----A doorkeeper.
+
+Dahabieh----A Nile houseboat with large lateen sails.
+Darabukkeh----A drum made of a skin stretched over an earthenware funnel.
+Dourha----Maize.
+
+Effendina----Most noble.
+El Azhar----The Arab University at Cairo.
+
+Fedddn----A measure of land representing about an acre.
+Fellah----The Egyptian peasant.
+
+Ghiassa----Small boat.
+
+Hakim----Doctor.
+Hasheesh----Leaves of hemp.
+
+Inshallah----God willing.
+
+Kdnoon----A musical instrument like a dulcimer.
+Kavass----An orderly.
+Kemengeh----A cocoanut fiddle.
+Khamsin----A hot wind of Egypt and the Soudan.
+
+Kourbash----A whip, often made of rhinoceros hide.
+
+La ilaha illa-llah----There is no deity but God.
+
+Malaish----No matter.
+Malboos----Demented.
+Mastaba----A bench.
+Medjidie----A Turkish Order.
+Mooshrabieh----Lattice window.
+Moufettish----High Steward.
+Mudir----The Governor of a
+Mudirieh, or province.
+Muezzin----The sheikh of the mosque who calls to prayer.
+
+Narghileh----A Persian pipe.
+Nebool----A quarter-staff.
+
+Ramadan----The Mahommedan season of fasting.
+
+Saadat-el-bdsha----Excellency Pasha.
+Sdis----Groom.
+Sakkia----The Persian water-wheel.
+Salaam----Eastern salutation.
+Sheikh-el-beled----Head of a village.
+
+Tarboosh----A Turkish turban.
+
+Ulema----Learned men.
+
+Wakf----Mahommedan Court dealing with succession, etc.
+Welee----A holy man or saint.
+
+Yashmak----A veil for the lower part of the face.
+Yelek----A long vest or smock.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "WEAVERS":
+
+A cloak of words to cover up the real thought behind
+Antipathy of the man in the wrong to the man in the right
+Antipathy of the lesser to the greater nature
+Begin to see how near good is to evil
+But the years go on, and friends have an end
+Cherish any alleviating lie
+Does any human being know what he can bear of temptation
+Friendship means a giving and a getting
+He's a barber-shop philosopher
+Heaven where wives without number awaited him
+Honesty was a thing he greatly desired--in others
+How little we can know to-day what we shall feel tomorrow
+How many conquests have been made in the name of God
+Monotonously intelligent
+No virtue in not falling, when you're not tempted
+Of course I've hated, or I wouldn't be worth a button
+One does the work and another gets paid
+Only the supremely wise or the deeply ignorant who never alter
+Passion to forget themselves
+Political virtue goes unrewarded
+She knew what to say and what to leave unsaid
+Smiling was part of his equipment
+Sometimes the longest way round is the shortest way home
+Soul tortured through different degrees of misunderstanding
+The vague pain of suffered indifference
+There is no habit so powerful as the habit of care of others
+There's no credit in not doing what you don't want to do
+To-morrow is no man's gift
+Tricks played by Fact to discredit the imagination
+Triumph of Oriental duplicity over Western civilisation
+We want every land to do as we do; and we want to make 'em do it
+We must live our dark hours alone
+When God permits, shall man despair?
+Woman's deepest right and joy and pain in one--to comfort
+
+
+
+
+
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