trouble comes
to us. Look how it has brought out the virtues of all our friends.
Take poor Mr. Stuart, for example. Should we ever have known what a
noble, constant man he was? And see Belmont and his wife, in front of
us there, going fearlessly forward, hand in hand, thinking only of each
other. And Cochrane, who always seemed on board the boat to be a rather
stand-offish, narrow sort of man! Look at his courage, and his
unselfish indignation when any one is ill used. Fardet, too, is as
brave as a lion. I think misfortune has done us all good."

Sadie sighed.

"Yes, if it would end right here one might say so; but if it goes on and
on for a few weeks or months of misery, and then ends in death, I don't
know where we reap the benefit of those improvements of character which
it brings. Suppose you escape, what will you do?"

The lawyer hesitated, but his professional instincts were still strong.

"I will consider whether an action lies, and against whom. It should be
with the organisers of the expedition for taking us to the Abousir
Rock--or else with the Egyptian Government for not protecting their
frontiers. It will be a nice legal question. And what will you do,
Sadie?"

It was the first time that he had ever dropped the formal Miss, but the
girl was too much in earnest to notice it.

"I will be more tender to others," she said. "I will try to make some
one else happy in memory of the miseries which I have endured."

"You have done nothing all your life but made others happy. You cannot
help doing it," said he. The darkness made it more easy for him to
break through the reserve which was habitual with him. "You need this
rough schooling far less than any of us. How could your character be
changed for the better?"

"You show how little you know me. I have been very selfish and
thoughtless."

"At least you had no need for all these strong emotions. You were
sufficiently alive without them. Now it has been different with me."

"Why did you need emotions, Mr. Stephens?"

"Because anything is better than stagnation. Pain is better than
stagnation. I have only just begun to live. Hitherto I have been a
machine upon the earth's surface. I was a one-ideaed man, and a
one-ideaed man is only one remove from a dead man. That is what I have
only just begun to realise. For all these years I have never been
stirred, never felt a real throb of human emotion pass through me.
I had no time for i