the thought have place in his
mind even for one swift moment. She was Lord Eglington's wife--there
could be no sharing of soul and mind and body and the exquisite devotion
of a life too dear for thought. Nothing that she was to Eglington could
be divided with another, not for an hour, not by one act of impulse; or
else she must be less, she that might have been, if there had been no
Eglington--

An exclamation broke from him, and, as one crying out in one's sleep
wakes himself, so the sharp cry of his misery woke him from the trance
of memory that had been upon him, and he slowly became conscious of Ebn
Ezra standing before him. Their eyes met, and Ebn Ezra spoke:

"The will of Allah be thy will, Saadat. If it be to go to the Soudan,
I am thine; if it be to stay, I am thy servant and thy brother. But
whether it be life or death, thou must sleep, for the young are like
water without sleep. Thou canst not live in strength nor die with
fortitude without it. For the old, malaish, old age is between a
sleeping and a waking! Come, Saadat! Forget not, thou must ride again to
Cairo at dawn."

David got slowly to his feet and turned towards the monastery. The
figure of a monk stood in the doorway with a torch to light him to his
room.

He turned to Ebn Ezra again. "Does thee think that I have aught of his
courage--my Uncle Benn? Thou knowest me--shall I face it out as did he?"

"Saadat," the old man answered, pointing, "yonder acacia, that was he,
quick to grow and short to live; but thou art as this date-palm, which
giveth food to the hungry, and liveth through generations. Peace be upon
thee," he added at the doorway, as the torch flickered towards the room
where David was to lie.

"And upon thee, peace!" answered David gently, and followed the smoky
light to an inner chamber. The room in which David found himself was
lofty and large, but was furnished with only a rough wooden bed, a rug,
and a brazier. Left alone, he sat down on the edge of the bed, and,
for a few moments, his mind strayed almost vaguely from one object to
another. From two windows far up in the wall the moonlight streamed in,
making bars of light aslant the darkness.

Not a sound broke the stillness. Yet, to his sensitive nerves, the air
seemed tingling with sensation, stirring with unseen activities. Here
the spirit of the desert seemed more insistent in its piercing vitality,
because it was shut in by four stone walls.

Mechanically he took off