He came back

with the magic of the Desert in his blood, hotel-life tasteless and

insipid by comparison. To human impressions thus he was fresh and

vividly sensitive. His being, cleaned and sensitized by pure grandeur,

“felt” people—for a time at any rate—with an uncommon sharpness of

receptive judgment. He returned to a life somehow mean and meager,

resuming insignificance with his dinner jacket. Out with the sand he

had been regal; now, like a slave, he strutted self-conscious and

reduced.

But this imperial standard of the Desert stayed a little time beside

him, its purity focussing judgment like a lens. The specks of smaller

emotions left it clear at first, and as his eye wandered vaguely over

the people assembled in the dining-room, it was arrested with a vivid

shock upon two figures at the little table facing him.

He had forgotten Vance, the Birmingham man who sought the North at

midnight with a pocket compass. He now saw him again, with an intuitive

discernment entirely fresh. Before memory brought up her clouding

associations, some brilliance flashed a light upon him. “That man,”

Henriot thought, “might have come with me. He would have understood and

loved it!” But the thought was really this—a moment’s reflection

spread it, rather: “He belongs somewhere to the Desert; the Desert

brought him out here.” And, again, hidden swiftly behind it like a

movement running below water—“What does he want with it? What is the

deeper motive he conceals? For there is a deeper motive; and it is

concealed.”

But it was the woman seated next him who absorbed his attention

really, even while this thought flashed and went its way. The empty

chair was occupied at last. Unlike his first encounter with the man,

she looked straight at him. Their eyes met fully. For several seconds

there was steady mutual inspection, while her penetrating stare, intent

without being rude, passed searchingly all over his face. It was

disconcerting. Crumbling his bread, he looked equally hard at her,

unable to turn away, determined not to be the first to shift his gaze.

And when at length she lowered her eyes he felt that many things had

happened, as in a long period of intimate conversation. Her mind had

judged him through and through. Questions and answer flashed. They were

no longer strangers. For the rest of dinner, though he was careful to

avoid direct inspection, he was aware that she felt his presence and

was secretly speaking with him. She asked questions beneath her breath.

The answers rose with the quickened pulses in his blood. Moreover, she

explained Richard Vance. It was this woman’s power that shone reflected

in the man. She was the one who knew the big, unusual things. Vance

merely echoed the rush of her vital personality.

This was the first impression that he got—from the most striking,

curious face he had ever seen in a woman. It remained very near him all

through the meal; she had moved to his table, it seemed she sat beside

him. Their minds certainly knew contact from that moment.

It is never difficult to credit strangers with the qualities and

knowledge that oneself craves for, and no doubt Henriot’s active fancy

went busily to work. But, none the less, this thing remained and grew:

that this woman was aware of the hidden things of Egypt he had always

longed to know. There was knowledge and guidance she could impart. Her

soul was searching among ancient things.