CHAPTER II.
As winter came on and Egypt began to be oppressively full of tourists,it was decided that we should make our escape up the Nile and haunt theruin of Kamak and other places until the outgoing tide set in. Oncefairly on our way, it did not take long to persuade me that she was notonly gaining strength each day in body but in soul. We had been morethan a month on the Nile; a tattered palm tree here tossing in the windand sand; a gaunt, clay-colored camel yonder, all legs and hair;beggars, disease, despair all around us; a land to fly from, fit placefor tombs, jackals, and famishing lions!
But she was stronger, there were roses in her face. Her glorious blackhair had not the dampness of death in it now, but was luxuriouslysensate with renewed life and health and possible happiness.
One warm sunset, as the boat lay with its prow in the yellow sand thatseemed to stretch away into infinity, she proposed that she and I shouldascend to the top of the tall ruins on a hill a little distance backfrom the river, and there wait and watch and listen for the coming day.
It was a dreadful place. I had already walked a little way out, but onseeing a shriveled black hand stretching up from the sand, I had turnedback; only to stumble over the head of a mummy which I had afterwardseen one of our servants gather up and take to his Arab camp forfirewood. Still, we had been pent up in the boat much; and then wouldnot she be with me?
Two Arabs were taken with us to carry a bottle of water and the rugs androbes. The hill was steeper than it at first seemed; and the ascentthrough the sand heavy. I was having an opportunity to test her strengthand endurance. I might also have an occasion to test her courage beforethe break of morning, for as we entered between two towering columns ofred granite, one of the Arabs dropped on a knee and spread his hand aswide as he could in the sand. But wide as he spread it, he could notmore than half cover the fresh foot-print of a huge lion.
The clamber to the top was steep and hard. Yet it was not nearly sosteep and hard as I could have wished it, when I reflected that verylikely before midnight a lion might pass that way.
We found that these wonderful columns of granite were coped with greatslabs of granite. These granite slabs were of astonishing breadth andthickness. This temple, as it is called, had probably been a tomb. Itook good care to see that there was no other means of ascent to theplace where we had chosen to spend the night than the one by which wehad ascended. And I remember how eagerly I wished for a crowbar in orderthat I might break down a little of the _debris_, so that the ascentmight be less easy for prowling beasts.
But as there was nothing of the sort at hand, I dismissed the two Arabsand resolved to be as brave, if possible, as the singularly brave andbeautiful woman who had come here to hear the voices of desolation.
The sky was rimmed with yellow; yellow to the east, yellow to the west;a world of soft and restful yellow that melted away by gradations as theeye ascended from the desert. It was like melody in its serene harmoniesand awful glory.
And she at my side partook of it all; she breathed it, absorbed it,literally became a part of it. I saw her grow and glow. Soul and body Isaw her dilate and expand till she was in absolute harmony with the aweand splendor that encompassed us. I felt that she had been in the midstof, even a part of, this tawny desolation ages and ages before. Perhapsher soul had been born here, born before the pyramids.
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