could add to the wealth of Egypt one-half. He had
believed in it, had worked for it and how much else! and his dreams and
his working had come to naught. He was sick to death--not with illness
alone, but with disappointment and broken hopes and a burden beyond the
powers of any one man.

He saw all now: all the falsehood and treachery and corruption. He
realised that Imshi Pasha had given him his hand that he might ruin
himself, that his own schemes might overwhelm him in the end. At every
turn he had been frustrated--by Imshi Pasha: three years of underground
circumvention, with a superficial approval and a mock support.

He lay and looked at the glow, the sunset glow of pink and gold on the
Libyan Hills, and his fevered eyes scarcely saw them; they were only a
part of this last helpless, senseless dream. Life itself was very far
away-practical, generous, hot-blooded life. This distance was so ample
and full and quiet, this mystery of the desert and the sky was so
immense, the spirit of it so boundless, that in the judgment of his
soul nothing mattered now. As he lay in reverie, he heard his servant
talking: it was the tale of the Mahdi and British valour and hopeless
fighting, and a red martyrdom set like a fixed star in a sunless sky.
What did it matter--what did it all matter, in this grave tremendous
quiet wherein his soul was hasting on?

The voices receded; he was alone with the immeasurable world; he fell
asleep.

IV

When he woke again it was to find at his bedside a kavass from Imshi
Pasha at Cairo. He shrank inwardly. The thought of the Pasha merely
nauseated him, but to the kavass he said: "What do you want, Mahommed?"

The kavass smiled; his look was agreeably mysterious, his manner humbly
confidential, his tongue officially deliberate.

"Efendina chok yasha--May the great lord live for ever! I bring good
news."

"Leave of absence, eh?"--rejoined Dimsdale feebly, yet ironically; for
that was the thing he expected now of the Minister, who had played him
like a ball on a racquet these three years past.

The kavass handed him a huge blue envelope, salaaming impressively.

"May my life be thy sacrifice, effendi," he said, and salaamed again.
"It is my joy to be near you."

"We have tasted your absence and found it bitter, Mahommed," Dimsdale
answered in kind, with a touch of plaintive humour, letting the envelope
fall from his fingers on the bed, so little was he interested in any
fresh move of