weeks."

There was a pause. Then Henry uttered his formula.

"Yes, sir," he murmured.

He turned and went slowly out.

His sloping shoulders looked as if the Heavens had fallen--on them.

XXIX

Isaacson refused to get into the omnibus at the station in Cairo, and
drove to Shepheard's Hotel in a victoria, drawn by a pair of lean grey
horses with long manes and tails. The coachman was an Arab much pitted
with smallpox, who wore the tarbush with European clothes. It was about
three o'clock in the afternoon, and the streets of the enticing and
confusing city were crowded. Isaacson sat up very straight and looked
about him with eager eyes. He felt keenly excited. This was his very
first taste of Eastern life. Never before had he set foot in his "own
place." Already, despite the zest shed through him by novelty, he had an
odd, happy feeling of being at home. He saw here and there houses with
white facades, before which palm-trees were waving. And in those houses
he knew he could be very much at ease. The courtyards, the steps, the
tiles, a fountain, small rugs, a divan, a carved dark door, a great
screen of wood hiding an inner apartment--could he not see within? He
had never entered that house there on the left, and yet he knew it. And
this throng of Eastern men, with dark, keen, shining eyes, with heavy,
slumbrous eyes, with eyes glittering with the yellow fires of greed;
this throng, yellow-skinned, brown-skinned, black-skinned, with thin,
expressive hands, with henna-tinted nails, with narrow, cunning wrists;
this throng that talked volubly, that gesticulated, that gazed,
observing without self-consciousness, summing up without pity, whose
eyes took all and gave nothing--if he stepped out of the carriage, if he
forsook the borrowed comforts and the borrowed delights of Europe, if he
hid himself in this throng, would he not find himself for the first
time?

He was sorry when the carriage drew up before the great terrace of the
hotel. But he had not lost touch with the pageant. He realized that,
almost with a sensation of exultation, when he came down from his room
between four and five o'clock, and took a seat by the railing.

"Tea, sir?"

He nodded to the German waiter. Somewhere a band was playing melodies of
Europe. That night he would seek in the native quarter the whining and
syncopated tunes of the East.

The tea was brought, and an Arab approached with papers: the "_Sphinx_,"
a French paper publ