he Egyptian
sun had deepened into ruddiness; with soft, dreamy eyes and golden hair.
He looked lithe and agile rather than strong. He was shy at first, but
once set going, talked freely, and was interesting.

His work had taken him into the Desert, far from the beaten tracks. He
described the life of the people, very little different from what it must
have been in Noah's time. For months he had been the only white man
there, and had lived among them. What had struck him was how little he
had missed all the paraphernalia of civilization, once he had got over
the first shock. He had learnt their sports and games; wrestled and swum
and hunted with them. Provided one was a little hungry and tired with
toil, a stew of goat's flesh with sweet cakes and fruits, washed down
with wine out of a sheep's skin, made a feast; and after, there was music
and singing and dancing, or the travelling story-teller would gather
round him his rapt audience. Paris had only robbed women of their grace
and dignity. He preferred the young girls in their costume of the
fourteenth dynasty. Progress, he thought, had tended only to complicate
life and render it less enjoyable. All the essentials of happiness--love,
courtship, marriage, the home, children, friendship, social intercourse,
and play, were independent of it; had always been there for the asking.

Joan thought his mistake lay in regarding man's happiness as more
important to him than his self-development. It was not what we got out
of civilization but what we put into it that was our gain. Its luxuries
and ostentations were, in themselves, perhaps bad for us. But the
pursuit of them was good. It called forth thought and effort, sharpened
our wits, strengthened our brains. Primitive man, content with his
necessities, would never have produced genius. Art, literature, science
would have been stillborn.

He hesitated before replying, glancing at her furtively while crumbling
his bread. When he did, it was in the tone that one of her younger
disciples might have ventured into a discussion with Hypatia. But he
stuck to his guns.

How did she account for David and Solomon, Moses and the Prophets? They
had sprung from a shepherd race. Yet surely there was genius,
literature. Greece owed nothing to progress. She had preceded it. Her
thinkers, her poets, her scientists had draws their inspiration from
nature, not civilization. Her art had sprung full grown out of the soil