It would enlarge and complete, so that this day might
be rounded to perfection. Of this she was quite sure.

"Well?" she said. "Go on!"

"I had been busy all that day in my office finishing up my work. I
turned the key in the door at ten o'clock, thinking with relief that for
six weeks I should not open it, and I strolled northward out of Wadi
Halfa along the Nile bank into the little town of Tewfikieh. As I
entered the main street I saw a small crowd--Arabs, negroes, a Greek or
two, and some Egyptian soldiers, standing outside the cafe, and lit up
by a glare of light from within. As I came nearer I heard the sound of a
violin and a zither, both most vilely played, jingling out a waltz. I
stood at the back of the crowd and looked over the shoulders of the men
in front of me into the room. It was a place of four bare whitewashed
walls; a bar stood in one corner, a wooden bench or two were ranged
against the walls, and a single unshaded paraffin lamp swung and glared
from the ceiling. A troupe of itinerant musicians were playing to that
crowd of negroes and Arabs and Egyptians for a night's lodging and the
price of a meal. There were four of them, and, so far as I could see,
all four were Greeks. Two were evidently man and wife. They were both
old, both slatternly and almost in rags; the man a thin, sallow-faced
fellow, with grey hair and a black moustache; the woman fat, coarse of
face, unwieldy of body. Of the other two, one it seemed must be their
daughter, a girl of seventeen, not good-looking really, but dressed and
turned out with a scrupulous care, which in those sordid and mean
surroundings lent her good looks. The care, indeed, with which she was
dressed assured me she was their daughter, and to tell the truth, I was
rather touched by the thought that the father and mother would go in
rags so that she at all costs might be trim. A clean ribbon bound back
her hair, an untorn frock of some white stuff clothed her tidily; even
her shoes were neat. The fourth was a young man; he was seated in the
window, with his back towards me, bending over his zither. But I could
see that he wore a beard. When I came up the old man was playing the
violin, though playing is not indeed the word. The noise he made was
more like the squeaking of a pencil on a slate; it set one's teeth on
edge; the violin itself seemed to squeal with pain. And while he
fiddled, and the young man hammered at his zither, the old woman and
girl slowly re