presence of his superior, and this wide, droll hat on his head. David
knew that he ran risks, that his confidence invited the occasional
madness of a fanatical mind, which makes murder of the infidel a passport
to heaven; but as a man he took his chances, and as a Christian he
believed he would suffer no mortal hurt till his appointed time. He was
more Oriental, more fatalist, than he knew. He had also early in his
life learned that an honest smile begets confidence; and his face, grave
and even a little austere in outline, was usually lighted by a smile.

From the Mokattam Hills, where he read Faith's letter again, his back
against one of the forts which Napoleon had built in his Egyptian days,
he scanned the distance. At his feet lay the great mosque, and the
citadel, whose guns controlled the city, could pour into it a lava stream
of shot and shell. The Nile wound its way through the green plains,
stretching as far to the north as eye could see between the opal and
mauve and gold of the Libyan Hills. Far over in the western vista a long
line of trees, twining through an oasis flanking the city, led out to a
point where the desert abruptly raised its hills of yellow sand. Here,
enormous, lonely, and cynical, the pyramids which Cheops had built, the
stone sphinx of Ghizeh, kept faith with the desert in the glow of
rainless land-reminders ever that the East, the mother of knowledge, will
by knowledge prevail; that:

"The thousand years of thy insolence
The thousand years of thy faith,
Will be paid in fiery recompense,
And a thousand years of bitter death."


"The sword--for ever the sword," David said to himself, as he looked: