the little fires built along the shore
and atop of the piles of grain, round which sat the white, the black,
and the yellow-robed riverine folk in the crimson glare; while from the
banks came the cry: "Alla-haly, 'm alla-haly!" as stalwart young Arabs
drew in from the current to the bank some stubborn, overloaded khiassa.
She heard the snarl of the camels as they knelt down before her father's
but to rest before the journey into the yellow plains of sand beyond.
She saw the seller of sweetmeats go by calling--calling. She heard the
droning of the children in the village school behind the hut, the dull
clatter of Arabic consonants galloping through the Koran. She saw the
moon--the full moon-upon the Nile, the wide acreage of silver water
before the golden-yellow and yellow-purple of the Libyan hills behind.

She saw through her tears the sweet mirage of home, and her heart
rebelled against the prison where she lay. What should she know of
hospitals--she whose medicaments had been herbs got from the Nile valley
and the cool Nile mud? Was it not the will of God if we lived or the
will of God if we died? Did we not all lie in the great mantle of the
mercy of God, ready to be lifted up or to be set down as He willed?
They had prisoned her here; there were bars upon the windows, there were
watchmen at the door.

At last she could bear it no longer; the end of it all came. She stole
out over the bodies of the sleeping watchmen, out into the dusty road
under the palms, down to the waterside, to the Nile--the path leading
homewards. She must go down the Nile, hiding by day, travelling by
night--the homing bird with a broken wing-back to the but where she had
lived so long with Wassef the camel-driver; back where she could lie
in the dusk of her windowless home, shutting out the world from her
solitude. There she could bear the agony of her hour.

Drinking the water of the Nile, eating the crumbs of dourha bread she
had brought from the hospital, getting an onion from a field, chewing
shreds of sugarcane, hiding by day and trudging on by night,
hourly growing weaker, she struggled towards Beni Souef.
Fifty--forty--thirty--ten--five miles! Oh! the last two days, her head
so hot and her brain bursting, and a thousand fancies swimming
before her eyes, her heart fluttering, fluttering--stopping, going
on--stopping, going on.

It was only the sound of the river--the Nile, Mother of Egypt, crooning
to her disordered spirit, which