him worthy.

He sat there, the many sheets of the letter between his fingers, looking
out through the window at the brown, windswept hollows and little hills
and the cold gray-green sea beyond. He saw none of these. What he did
see was the long stretch of ridged sand, heaving to the horizon, the
brilliant blue of the African sky, the line of camels trudging on, on.
He saw the dahabeah slowly making its way up the winding river, the flat
banks on either side, the palm trees in silhouetted clusters against the
sunset, the shattered cornice of the ruins he was to explore just coming
into view. He saw and heard the shrieking, chattering laborers digging,
half naked, amid the scattered blocks of sculptured stone and, before
and beneath them, the upper edge of the doorway which they were
uncovering, the door behind which he was to find--who knew what
treasures.

"Mr. Bangs," called Martha from the foot of the stairs, "dinner's
ready."

Galusha was far away, somewhere beyond the Libyan desert, but he heard
the summons.

"Eh?" he exclaimed. "Oh, yes, yes, Miss Martha, I am coming."

As he descended the stairs, it occurred to him that the voices calling
him to dinner across the sands or beneath the palms would be quite
different from this one, they would be masculine and strange and without
the pleasant, cheerful cordiality to which he had become accustomed.
Martha Phipps called one to a meal as if she really enjoyed having him
there. There was a welcome in her tones, a homelike quality, a... yes,
indeed, very much so.

At table he was unusually quiet. Martha asked him why he looked at her
so queerly.

"Eh? Do I?" he exclaimed. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I wasn't aware. I beg your
pardon. I hope you're not offended."

She laughed. "Mercy me," she said, "I'm not offended so easily. And if
your absent-mindedness could make me take offense, Mr. Bangs, we
should have quarreled long ago. But I should like to know what you were
thinkin' about. You sat there and stared at me and your face was as
solemn as--as Luce's when it is gettin' past his dinner time. You looked
as if you had lost your best friend."

He did not smile even then. Nor did he make any reply worth noting. As a
matter of fact, he was awakening to the realization that if he accepted
the call to Egypt--and accept he must, of course--he would in solemn
truth lose his best friend. Or, if not lose her exactly, go away and
leave her for so long that it amounted to a loss.