t's event was not coloured by a single
direct criticism upon the girl. But he could not prevent the suggestion
suddenly flashing into his mind that she had thought of herself first
and last. Well, she had gone; and he was here to face the future,
unencumbered by aught save the weight of his own conscience.

Yet, the weight of his conscience! His feet were still free--free for
one short hour before he went to Kaid; but his soul was in chains. As he
turned his course to the Nile, and crossed over the great bridge, there
went clanking by in chains a hundred conscripts, torn from their homes
in the Fayoum, bidding farewell for ever to their friends, receiving
their last offerings, for they had no hope of return. He looked at their
haggard and dusty faces, at their excoriated ankles, and his eyes closed
in pain. All they felt he felt. What their homes were to them, these
fellaheen, dragged forth to defend their country, to go into the desert
and waste their lives under leaders tyrannous, cruel, and incompetent,
his old open life, his innocence, his integrity, his truthfulness and
character, were to him. By an impulsive act, by a rash blow, he had
asserted his humanity; but he had killed his fellow-man in anger. He
knew that as that fatal blow had been delivered, there was no thought
of punishment--it was blind anger and hatred: it was the ancient
virus working which had filled the world with war, and armed it at the
expense, the bitter and oppressive expense, of the toilers and the poor.
The taxes for wars were wrung out of the sons of labour and sorrow.
These poor fellaheen had paid taxes on everything they possessed. Taxes,
taxes, nothing but taxes from the cradle! Their lands, houses, and
palm-trees would be taxed still, when they would reap no more. And
having given all save their lives, these lives they must now give under
the whip and the chain and the sword.

As David looked at them in their single blue calico coverings, in which
they had lived and slept-shivering in the cold night air upon the bare
ground--these thoughts came to him; and he had a sudden longing to
follow them and put the chains upon his own arms and legs, and go forth
and suffer with them, and fight and die? To die were easy. To fight?...
Was it then come to that? He was no longer a man of peace, but a man
of the sword; no longer a man of the palm and the evangel, but a man of
blood and of crime! He shrank back out of the glare of the sun; for it
su