voice, and her eyes drew back from the distance and
turned on him. She smiled.

"I don't know. I suppose it gives one proportion, though I've been told
by Donovan Pasha and the Consul that I have no sense of proportion. What
difference does it make? It is the metier of some people of this world
to tell the truth, letting it fall as it will, and offend where it will,
to be in a little unjust maybe, measure wrongly here and there, lest the
day pass and nothing be done. It is for the world to correct, to adjust,
to organise, to regulate the working of the truth. One person cannot do
all."

Every minute made him more and more regretful, while it deepened his
feelings for her. He saw how far removed was her mind from the sordid
views of things, and how sincere a philosophy governed her actions and
her mission.

He was about to speak, but she continued: "I suppose I've done unwise
things from a worldly, a diplomatic, and a political point of view.
I've--I've broken my heart on the rock of the impossible, so my father
says.... But, no, I haven't broken my heart. I have only given it a
little too much hope sometimes, too much disappointment at others. In
any case--can one be pardoned for quoting poetry in these days? I don't
know, I've been so long out of the world--

'Bruised hearts when all is ended,
Bear the better all after-stings;
Broken once, the citadel mended
Standeth through all things.'

I'm not--not hopeless, though I've had a long hard fight here in Egypt;
and I've done so little."... She kept smoothing out the letter she had
had from Kingsley Bey, as though unconsciously. "But it is coming, the
better day. I know it. Some one will come who will do all that I have
pleaded for--stop the corvee and give the peasants a chance; stop
slavery, and purify the harem and start the social life on a higher
basis; remove a disgrace from the commerce of an afflicted land;
remove--remove once for all such men as Kingsley Bey; make it impossible
for fortunes to be made out of human flesh and blood." She had the rapt
look of the dreamer. Suddenly she recovered her more worldly mood: "What
are you doing here?" she added. "Have you come to take up official life?
Have you some public position--of responsibility? Ah, perhaps,"--she
laughed almost merrily,--"you are the very man; the great reformer.
Perhaps you think and feel as I do, though you've argued against me.
Perhaps you only wante