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She spoke as though herself in a dream, her look intent on the glowing distance, as though unconscious of his presence.

“It’s good to have lived among mountains and climbed them when you were young. It gives you bigger ideas of things. You could see a long way with the sun behind you, from Skaw Fell.”

He spoke in a low voice, and her eyes drew back from the distance and turned on him. She smiled.

“I don’t know. I suppose it gives one proportion, though I’ve been told by Donovan Pasha and the Consul that I have no sense of proportion. What difference does it make? It is the metier of some people of this world to tell the truth, letting it fall as it will, and offend where it will, to be in a little unjust maybe, measure wrongly here and there, lest the day pass and nothing be done. It is for the world to correct, to adjust, to organise, to regulate the working of the truth. One person cannot do all.”

Every minute made him more and more regretful, while it deepened his feelings for her. He saw how far removed was her mind from the sordid views of things, and how sincere a philosophy governed her actions and her mission.

He was about to speak, but she continued: “I suppose I’ve done unwise things from a worldly, a diplomatic, and a political point of view. I’ve–I’ve broken my heart on the rock of the impossible, so my father says…. But, no, I haven’t broken my heart. I have only given it a little too much hope sometimes, too much disappointment at others. In any case–can one be pardoned for quoting poetry in these days? I don’t know, I’ve been so long out of the world–

‘Bruised hearts when all is ended,
Bear the better all after-stings;
Broken once, the citadel mended
Standeth through all things.’

I’m not–not hopeless, though I’ve had a long hard fight here in Egypt; and I’ve done so little.”… She kept smoothing out the letter she had had from Kingsley Bey, as though unconsciously. “But it is coming, the better day. I know it. Some one will come who will do all that I have pleaded for–stop the corvee and give the peasants a chance; stop slavery, and purify the harem and start the social life on a higher basis; remove a disgrace from the commerce of an afflicted land; remove–remove once for all such men as Kingsley Bey; make it impossible for fortunes to be made out of human flesh and blood.” She had the rapt look of the dreamer. Suddenly she recovered her more worldly mood: “What are you doing here?” she added. “Have you come to take up official life? Have you some public position–of responsibility? Ah, perhaps,”–she laughed almost merrily,–“you are the very man; the great reformer. Perhaps you think and feel as I do, though you’ve argued against me. Perhaps you only wanted to see how real my devotion to this cause is. Tell me, are you only a tourist–I was going to say idler, but I know you are not; you have the face of a man who does things–are you tourist or worker here? What does Egypt mean to you? That sounds rather non-conformist, but Egypt, to me, is the saddest, most beautiful, most mysterious place in the world. All other nations, all other races, every person in the world should be interested in Egypt. Egypt is the lost child of Creation–the dear, pitiful waif of genius and mystery of the world. She has kept the calendar of the ages–has outlasted all other nations, and remains the same as they change and pass. She has been the watcher of the world, the one who looks on, and suffers, as the rest of the nations struggle for and wound her in their turn. What does Egypt mean to you? What would you do for her–anything?”