or Egypt, O friend
of the fellah and saviour of the land. Have I not heard of the great
reservoirs you would make in the Fayoum, of the great dam at Assouan?
Have I not heard, and waited, and watched? and now..."

He paused and touched his breast and his forehead in respect.

Dimsdale was well-nigh taken off his feet. It seemed too wonderful to be
true--a free hand in Egypt, and under Imshi Pasha, the one able Minister
of them all, who had, it was said, always before resisted the irrigation
schemes of the foreigners, who believed only in the corroee and fate!

Dimsdale rejoiced that at the beginning of his career he had so inspired
the powerful one with confidence. With something very like emotion he
thanked the Minister.

"Yes, my dear friend," answered the Pasha, "the love of Egypt has helped
us to understand each other. And we shall know each other better still
by-and-by-by-and-by.... You shall be gazetted to-morrow. Allah preserve
you from all error!"

III

This began the second period of Dimsdale's career. As he went forth
from Cairo up the Nile with great designs in his mind, and an approving
Ministry behind him, he had the feeling of a hunter with a sure
quarry before him. Now he remembered Lucy Gray; and he flushed with a
delightful and victorious indignation remembering his last hour with
her. He even sentimentally recalled a song he once wrote for her
sympathetic voice. The song was called "No Man's Land." He recited two
of the verses to himself now, with a kind of unction:

"And we have wandered far, my dear, and we have loved apace;
A little hut we built upon the sand;
The sun without to brighten it-within your golden face:
O happy dream, O happy No Man's Land!

"The pleasant furniture of spring was set in all the fields,
And sweet and wholesome all the herbs and flowers;
Our simple cloth, my dear, was spread with all the orchard yields,
And frugal only were the passing hours."

A wave of feeling passed over him suddenly. Those verses were youth, and
youth was gone, with all its flushed and spirited dalliance and reckless
expenditure of feeling. Youth was behind him, and love was none of his,
nor any cares of home, nor wife nor children; nothing but ambition now,
and the vanity of successful labour.

Sitting on the deck of the Sefi at El Wasta, he looked round him. In the
far distance was the Maydoum Pyramid, "the Imperfect One," unexplored
by man these thousands of