Once only, he thought, "What if I left Egypt now--at once--and saw
her no more?" And then he laughed scornfully at the impossibility
proposed. "Leave Egypt!" he muttered, "I might as well leave the
world altogether! She would draw me back with those sweet wild
eyes of hers,--she would drag me from the uttermost parts of the
earth to fall at her feet in a very agony of love. My God! She
must have her way and do with me as she will, for I feel that she
holds my life in her hands!"

As he spoke these last words half aloud, he sprang up from the
chair in which he had been reclining, and stood for a moment lost
in frowning meditation.

"My life in her hands!" he repeated musingly. "Yes, it has come to
that! My life!" A great sigh broke from him. "My life--my art--my
work--my name! In all these things I have taken pride, and she--
she can trample them under her feet and make of me nothing more
than man clamoring for woman's love! What a wild world it is! What
a strange Force must that be which created it!--the Force that
some men call God and others Devil! A strange, blind, brute
Force!--for it makes us aspire only to fall; it gives a man dreams
of ambition and splendid attainment only to fling him like a mad
fool on a woman's breast, and bid him find there, and there only,
the bewildering sweetness which makes everything else in existence
poor and tame in comparison. Well, well--my life! What is it? A
mere grain of sand dropped in the sea; let her do with it as she
will. God! How I felt her power upon me last night,--last night
when her lithe figure swaying in the dance reminded me ..."

He paused, startled at the turn his own thoughts were taking.