"It doesn't sound distinguished," she remarked drily. Because she smiled
satirically at him, and was unresponsive to his enthusiasm, and gave him
no chance to tell her of the nobility of the work in which he was going
to put his life; of the work of the Pharaohs in their day, the hope of
Napoleon in his, and the creed Mahomet Ali held and practised, that
the Nile was Egypt and Egypt was irrigation--because of this he became
angry, said unkind things, drew acid comments upon himself, and left
her with a last good-bye. He did not realise that he had played into the
hands of Lucy Gray in a very childish manner. For in scheming that he
should go to Egypt she had planned also that he should break with her;
for she never had any real intention of marrying him, and yet it was
difficult to make him turn his back on her, while at the same time she
was too tender of his feelings to turn her back on him. She held that
anger was the least injurious of all grounds for separation. In anger
there was no humiliation. There was something dignified and brave about
a quarrel, while a growing coolness which must end in what the world
called "jilting" was humiliating. Besides, people who quarrel and
separate may meet again and begin over again: impossible in the other
circumstance.

II

In Egypt Dimsdale made a reputation; not at once, but he did make it.
The first two years of his stay he had plenty to do. At the end of the
time he could have drawn a map of the Nile from Uganda to the Barrages;
he knew the rains in each district from the region of the Sadds to the
Little Borillos; there was not a canal, from the small Bahr Shebin to
the big Rayeh Menoufieh or the majestic Ibrahimieh, whose slope, mean
velocity and discharge he did not know; and he carried in his mind every
drainage cut and contour from Tamis to Damanhur, from Cairo to Beltim.
He knew neither amusement nor society, for every waking hour was spent
in the study of the Nile and what the Nile might do.

After one of his journeys up the Nile, Imshi Pasha, the Minister of
the Interior, said to him: "Ah, my dear friend, with whom be peace and
power, what have you seen as you travel?"

"I saw a fellah yesterday who has worked nine months on the corvee--six
months for the Government and three for a Pasha, the friend of the
Government. He supplied his own spades and baskets; his lantern was at
the service of the Khedive; he got his own food as best he could. He had
one fedd