sappeared.

And all along the Nile the sakeeyahs lifted up their old and melancholy
song. And the lines of bending and calling brown men led the eyes
towards the south.

XXXII

On a morning at ten o'clock the _Fatma_ arrived opposite to Edfou, and
Hassan came to tell his master. The _Loulia_ had not been sighted. Now
and then on the gleaming river dahabeeyahs had passed, floating almost
broadside and carried quickly by the tide. Now and then a steamer had
churned the Nile water into foam, and vanished, leaving streaks of white
in its wake. And the dream had returned, the dream that was cradled in
gold, and that was musical with voices of brown men and sakeeyas, and
that was shaded sometimes by palm-trees and watched sometimes by stars.
But no dahabeeyah had been overtaken. The _Fatma_ travelled slowly,
often in an almost breathless calm. And Isaacson, if he had ever wished,
no longer wished her to hasten. Upon his sensitive and strongly
responsive temperament the Nile had laid a spell. Never before had he
been so intimately affected by an environment. Egypt laid upon him
hypnotic hands. Without resistance he endured their gentle pressure;
without resistance he yielded himself to the will that flowed
mysteriously from them upon his spirit. And the will whispered to him to
relax his mind, as in London each day for a fixed period he relaxed his
muscles--whispered to him to be energetic, determined, acquisitive no
more, but to be very passive and to dream.

He did not land to visit Esneh. He would have nothing to do with El-Kab.
Hassan was surprised, inclined to be argumentative, but bowed to the
will of the dreamer. Nevertheless, when at last Edfou was reached, he
made one more effort to rouse the spirit of the sight-seer in his
strangely inert protector; and this time, almost to his surprise,
Isaacson responded. He had an intense love of purity and of form in art,
and even in his dream he felt that he could not miss the temple of Horus
at Edfou. But he forbade Hassan to accompany him on his visit. He was
determined to go alone, regardless of the etiquette of the Nile. He took
his sun-umbrella, slipped his guide-book into his pocket, and slowly,
almost reluctantly, left the _Fatma_. At the top of the bank a donkey
was waiting. Before he mounted it he stood for a moment to look about
him. His eyes travelled up-stream, and at a long distance off, rising
into the radiant atmosphere and relieved against the piercin