er-brown of the water into little waves of sparkling blue edged
with silver ripples. The river was beautiful to her, even in her
sorry plight, and to-day there were little clouds in the sky,
furtive, scuddy little clouds with wind-teased edges, and they cast
soft shadows over the river and over the tender green of the fields
and the flat, mirroring water standing level in the trenches. In the
fields brown men and women were working, and on the river banks the
half-naked figures of _fellaheen_ were ceaselessly bending,
ceaselessly straightening, as they dipped up the water from the
_shadoufs_ to feed the thirsty land. Sometimes in the fields Arlee
saw the red rusty bulk of the old engines, which the Mad Khedive had
tried to install among his people, to do away with this
back-breaking work, now lying useless and ignored. God forbid that
we do otherwise than our fathers, said the people.

Across the water came the monotonous chant of their labor song, and
sometimes the creak and squeak of some inland well-sweep drawn round
and round by some patient camel. She felt herself to be in another
world, as she sat in that boat guarded by that old woman and an
eunuch, a world strange and remote, yet desperately real as it
enmeshed her in its secret motives, its incalculable forces....

As she watched, as the surface of her mind reflected these sights
and was caught in the maze of fresh impressions, the back of that
mind was forever at work on her own terrifying problem. She thought
confidently of escape, not able to plan it but waiting intently upon
opportunity, upon the passing of a boat perhaps, or the moment of
tying to some bank.

There was in her a high spirit of undaunted pluck and an excitement
in adventure, which made her heart quicken instead of flag at the
odds before her. Only the thought of the desperate stakes and the
reality of her hidden fears would often draw the color from her
cheeks and stop an instant the beating of that hurrying heart.... If
those hawk-like eyes were watching then they might see the slim
hands pressed feverishly together before warning self-control turned
them lax again.

So hour after hour the boat went on. On the left now the long
mountain of Gebel-el-Tayr stretched golden and tawny like a lion of
stone basking in the sun. They passed Beni-Hassan, where a Nile
steamer lay staked to the shore, the passengers streaming gaily out
and starting off on donkeys for an excursion to the tombs. If