"Do you know, Lord Ernest," she said, in the low, rich voice she is
cultivating, "I don't mind telling you that I felt as if I were coming
home, after a long absence. Monny wanted to see Egypt; I was dying to.
That's the difference between us."

"It's natural," I answered, sympathetically.

"Yes--considering everything. Yet we're both afraid. She in one way, I
in another. I haven't told her. She hasn't told me. But I know. She has
the same impression I have, that something's going to _happen_
--something very great, to change the whole of life--in Egypt: 'Khem,' it
seems to me I can remember calling it. You know it was Khem, until the
Arabs came and named it Misr. Do you believe in impressions like that?"

"I don't disbelieve," I said. "Some people are more sensitive than
others."

"Yes. Or else they're older souls. But it may be the same thing. I
can't fancy Monny an old soul, can you?--yet she may be, for she's very
intelligent, although so self-willed. I think what she's afraid of is
getting interested in some wonderful man with Turkish or Egyptian
blood, a magnificent creature like you read of in books, you know; then
you have to give them up in the last chapter, and send them away
broken-hearted. I suppose there _are_ such men in real life?"

"I doubt if there are such romantic figures as the books make out," I
tried to reassure her. "There might be a prince or two, handsome and
cultivated, educated in England, perhaps, for some of the 'swells' are
sent from Egypt to Oxford and Cambridge, just as they are in India. But
even if Miss Gilder should meet a man of that sort, I should say she