Broken once, the citadel mended
Standeth through all things.'

I'm not--not hopeless, though I've had a long hard fight here in Egypt;
and I've done so little." . . . She kept smoothing out the letter she
had had from Kingsley Bey, as though unconsciously. "But it is coming,
the better day. I know it. Some one will come who will do all that I
have pleaded for--stop the corvee and give the peasants a chance; stop
slavery, and purify the harem and start the social life on a higher
basis; remove a disgrace from the commerce of an afflicted land; remove
--remove once for all such men as Kingsley Bey; make it impossible for
fortunes to be made out of human flesh and blood." She had the rapt look
of the dreamer. Suddenly she recovered her more worldly mood: "What are
you doing here?" she added. "Have you come to take up official life?
Have you some public position--of responsibility? Ah, perhaps,"--she
laughed almost merrily,--"you are the very man; the great reformer.
Perhaps you think and feel as I do, though you've argued against me.
Perhaps you only wanted to see how real my devotion to this cause is.
Tell me, are you only a tourist--I was going to say idler, but I know you
are not; you have the face of a man who does things--are you tourist or
worker here? What does Egypt mean to you? That sounds rather non-
conformist, but Egypt, to me, is the saddest, most beautiful, most
mysterious place in the world. All other nations, all other races, every
person in the world should be interested in Egypt. Egypt is the lost
child of Creation--the dear, pitiful waif of genius and mystery of the
world. She has kept the calendar of the ages--has outlasted all other
nations, and remains the same as they change and pass. She has been the
watcher of the world, the one who looks on, and suffers, as the rest of
the nations struggle for and wound her in their turn. What does Egypt
mean to you? What would you do for her--anything?"