Deepening with every hour into an incalculable splendour, it waited. 2

In the street the foremost riders drew rein, and, two and two abreast,
the long line clattered past the shops and cafés, the railway station
and hotels, stared at by the natives from the busy pavements. The
donkeys stumbled, blinded by the electric light. Girls in white dresses
flitted here and there, arabîyehs rattled past with people hurrying
home to dress for dinner, and the evening train, just in from Cairo,
disgorged its stream of passengers. There were dances in several of the
hotels that night. Voices rose on all sides. Questions and answers,
engagements and appointments were made, little plans and plots and
intrigues for seizing happiness on the wing--before the wave rolled in
and caught the lot. They chattered gaily:

"You _are_ going, aren't you? You promised----"

"Of course I am." "Then I'll drive you over. May I call for you?" "All right. Come at ten." "We shan't have finished our bridge by then. Say ten-thirty." And eyes exchanged their meaning signals. The group dismounted and
dispersed. Arabs standing under the lebbekh trees, or squatting on
the pavements before their dim-lit booths, watched them with faces of
gleaming bronze. Rivers gave his bridle to a donkey-boy, and moved
across stiffly after the long ride to help the girl dismount. "You feel
tired?" he asked gently. "It's been a long day." For her face was white
as chalk, though the eyes shone brilliantly. "Tired, perhaps," she answered, "but exhilarated too. I should like to
be there now. I should like to go back this minute--if some one would
take me." And, though she said it lightly, there was a meaning in her
voice he apparently chose to disregard. It was as if she knew his
secret. "Will you take me--some day soon?" The direct question, spoken by those determined little lips, was
impossible to ignore. He looked close into her face as he helped her
from the saddle with a spring that brought her a moment half into
his arms. "Some day--soon. I will," he said with emphasis, "when you
are--ready." The pallor in her face, and a certain expression in it he
had not known before, startled him. "I think you have been overdoing
it," he added, with a tone in which authority and love were oddly
mingled, neither of them disguised. "Like yourself," she smiled, shaking her skirts out and looking down at
her dusty shoes. "I've only a few days more--before I sail. We're both
in such a hurry, but you are the worst of the two." "Because my time is even shorter," ran his horrified thought--for he
said no word. She raised her eyes suddenly to his, with an expression that for an
instant almost convinced him she had guessed--and the soul in him
stood rigidly at attention, urging back the rising fires. The hair had
dropped loosely round the sun-burned neck. Her face was level with
his shoulder. Even the glare of the street lights could not make her
undesirable. But behind the gaze of the deep brown eyes another thing
looked forth imperatively into his own. And he recognised it with a
rush of terror, yet of singular exultation. "It followed us all the way," she whispered. "It came after us from the
desert--where it _lives_." "At the houses," he said equally low, "it stopped." He gladly adopted
her syncopated speech, for it helped him in his struggle to subdue
those rising fires. For a second she hesitated. "You mean, if we had not left so soon--when
it turned cold. If we had not hurried--if we had remained a little
longer----"

He caught at her hand, unable to control himself, but dropped it
again the same second, while she made as though she had not noticed,
forgiving him with her eyes. "Or a great deal longer," she added
slowly--"for ever?" And then he was certain that she _had_ guessed--not that he loved her
above all else in the world, for that was so obvious that a child might
know it, but that his silence was due to his other, lesser secret; that
the great Executioner stood waiting to drop the hood about his eyes. He
was already pinioned. Something in her gaze and in her manner persuaded
him suddenly that she understood. His exhilaration increased extraordinarily. "I mean," he said very
quietly, "that the spell weakens here among the houses and among
the--so-called living." There was masterfulness, triumph, in his voice. Very wonderfully he saw her smile change; she drew slightly closer to
his side, as though unable to resist. "Mingled with lesser things we
should not understand completely," he added softly. "And that might be a mistake, you mean?" she asked quickly, her face
grave again. It was his turn to hesitate a moment. The breeze stirred the hair about
her neck, bringing its faint perfume--perfume of young life--to his
nostrils. He drew his breath in deeply, smothering back the torrent of
rising words he knew were unpermissible. "Misunderstanding," he said
briefly. "If the eye be single----" He broke off, shaken by a paroxysm
of coughing. "You know my meaning," he continued, as soon as the attack
had passed; "you feel the difference _here_," pointing round him to
the hotels, the shops, the busy stream of people; "the hurry, the
excitement, the feverish, blinding child's play which pretends to be
alive, but does not know it----" And again the coughing stopped him. This time she took his hand in her own, pressed it very slightly, then
released it. He felt it as the touch of that desert wave upon his soul. "The reception must be in complete and utter resignation. Tainted by
lesser things, the disharmony might be----" he began stammeringly. Again there came interruption, as the rest of the party called
impatiently to know if they were coming up to the hotel. He had not
time to find the completing adjective. Perhaps he could not find it
ever. Perhaps it does not exist in any modern language. Eternity is not
realised to-day; men have no time to know they are alive for ever; they
are too busy.... They all moved in a clattering, merry group towards the big hotel. Rivers and the girl were separated. 3

There was a dance that evening, but neither of these took part in
it. In the great dining-room their tables were far apart. He could
not even see her across the sea of intervening heads and shoulders. The long meal over, he went to his room, feeling it imperative to
be alone. He did not read, he did not write; but, leaving the light
unlit, he wrapped himself up and leaned out upon the broad window-sill
into the great Egyptian night. His deep-sunken thoughts, like to the
crowding stars, stood still, yet for ever took new shapes. He tried
to see behind them, as, when a boy, he had tried to see behind the
constellations--out into space--where there is nothing.