w the girl-child
swathed in purple still lying, sinuously as a young snake, upon the
palm-wood roof above the brown earth wall to watch me with her eyes of
cloud and fire.

And upon me, like cloud and fire--cloud of the tombs and the great
temple columns, fire of the brilliant life painted and engraved upon
them--there stole the spell of Egypt.

V

THE NILE

I do not find in Egypt any more the strangeness that once amazed, and
at first almost bewildered me. Stranger by far is Morocco, stranger
the country beyond Biskra, near Mogar, round Touggourt, even about El
Kantara. There I feel very far away, as a child feels distance from
dear, familiar things. I look to the horizon expectant of I know not
what magical occurrences, what mysteries. I am aware of the summons to
advance to marvellous lands, where marvellous things must happen. I am
taken by that sensation of almost trembling magic which came to me
when first I saw a mirage far out in the Sahara. But Egypt, though
it contains so many marvels, has no longer for me the marvellous
atmosphere. Its keynote is seductiveness.

In Egypt one feels very safe. Smiling policemen in clothes of spotless
white--emblematic, surely, of their innocence!--seem to be everywhere,
standing calmly in the sun. Very gentle, very tender, although perhaps
not very true, are the Bedouins at the Pyramids. Up the Nile the
fellaheen smile as kindly as the policemen, smile protectingly upon
you, as if they would say, "Allah has placed us here to take care of the
confiding stranger." No ferocious demands for money fall upon my ears;
only an occasional suggestion is subtly conveyed to me that even the
poor must live and that I am immensely rich. An amiable, an almost
enticing seductiveness seems emanating from the fertile soil, shining
in the golden air, gleaming softly in the amber sands, dimpling in the
brown, the mauve, the silver eddies of the Nile. It steals upon one. It
ripples over one. It laps one as if with warm and scented waves. A sort
of lustrous languor overtakes one. In physical well-being one sinks
down, and with wide eyes one gazes and listens and enjoys, and thinks
not of the morrow.

The dahabiyeh--her very name, the _Loulia_, has a gentle, seductive,
cooing sound--drifts broadside to the current with furled sails, or
glides smoothly on before an amiable north wind with sails unfurled.
Upon the bloomy banks, rich brown in color, the brown men stoop and
straighten them