l darkness of the night hours would the beloved faces and voices
come to me with an ever-recurring sense of loneliness, and, man though I
was, my pillow was frequently wet with tears. But our friendship for
each other was sincere and has remained so. For the Duke of G.--he has
now by the decrees of fate become the head of his family--is still
living, though we have seldom met of late years.

"We travelled together, enjoying those sweet pleasures of companionship
only given us in youth. With Egypt and Palestine we became intimate and
familiar. Cairo delighted us. It was less modern in those days than in
these. We were never tired of visiting the mosques with all their sacred
and historic charm. We made the acquaintance of the sheikhs, saw them
perform impossible magic, heard strange things revealed in a drop of
ink. To me these mysteries have remained unsolved to this day. We spent
hours and days amongst the tombs of the Caliphs, revelling in their
wonderful refinement. We visited all the ancient cities of the Nile:
Thebes with its hills and ruins, Memphis with its palm forests and
Pyramids--those monuments the most ancient in the world. We contemplated
the great Pyramids of Ghizeh by moonlight and felt steeped in mystery.
In the same weird light I have stood before the Sphinx and asked the
reason and origin of its existence, but only profound silence has
answered me. At Dendera, that perfect temple begun by Cleopatra and
finished by Tiberius, I gazed upon the features of the famous queen and
compared them with those of Hermonthis. I found they resembled each
other and confess that I wondered in what consisted the beauty of the
woman who changed the fate of the world--but beautiful she must have
been. We chartered our dahabeah and travelled up to the Second Cataract.
Never shall I forget the soothing repose of those quiet weeks, the
delight of our uninterrupted companionship, the books we read together,
the daily thoughts we exchanged, the ruined cities we explored. It was
an experience that comes only once in a lifetime.

"We both felt strongly the connection between Sacred Geography and
Sacred History: how the one would be better understood if the other were
visited. So together we became acquainted with the Peninsula of Sinai,
its mountains, plains, and sea. The charm and freedom of the desert I
had often dreamed about, but how far greater was the reality! Here we
revelled day after day in the wonderful isolation: sky