to thee--what is thy work to me?"

"Thy life is dear to Egypt, Effendina," urged David soothingly, "and my
labour for Egypt has been pleasant in thine eyes till now."

"Egypt cannot be saved against her will," was the moody response. "What
has come of the Western hand upon the Eastern plough?" His face grew
blacker; his heart was feeding on itself.

"Thou, the friend of Egypt, hast come of it, Effendina."

"Harrik was right, Harrik was right," Kaid answered, with stubborn gloom
and anger. "Better to die in our own way, if we must die, than live in
the way of another. Thou wouldst make of Egypt another England; thou
wouldst civilise the Soudan--bismillah, it is folly!"

"That is not the way Mehemet Ali thought, nor Ibrahim. Nor dost thou
think so, Effendina," David answered gravely. "A dark spirit is on thee.
Wouldst thou have me understand that what we have done together, thou
and I, was ill done, that the old bad days were better?"

"Go back to thine own land," was the surly answer. "Nation after nation
ravaged Egypt, sowed their legions here, but the Egyptian has lived them
down. The faces of the fellaheen are the faces of Thotmes and Seti. Go
back. Egypt will travel her own path. We are of the East; we are Muslim.
What is right to you is wrong to us. Ye would make us over--give us
cotton beds and wooden floors and fine flour of the mill, and cleanse
the cholera-hut with disinfectants, but are these things all? How many
of your civilised millions would die for their prophet Christ? Yet
all Egypt would rise up from the mud-floor, the dourha-field and the
mud-hut, and would come out to die for Mahomet and Allah--ay, as
Harrik knew, as Harrik knew! Ye steal into corners, and hide behind the
curtains of your beds to pray; we pray where the hour of prayer finds
us--in the street, in the market-place, where the house is building,
the horse being shod, or the money-changers are. Ye hear the call of
civilisation, but we heap the Muezzin--"

He stopped, and searched mechanically for his watch. "It is the hour the
Muezzin calls," said David gently. "It is almost sunset. Shall I open
the windows that the call may come to us?" he added.

While Kaid stared at him, his breast heaving with passion, David went to
a window and opened the shutters wide.

The Palace faced the Nile, which showed like a tortuous band of blue and
silver a mile or so away. Nothing lay between but the brown sand, and
here and there a handful of dar