Then the end came. He was stricken down, and lay above Assouan in a hut by the shore, from which he could see the Temple of Philoe, and Pharaoh’s Bed, and the great rocks, and the swift-flowing Nile. Here lay his greatest hope, the splendid design of his life--the great barrage of Assouan. With it he could add to the wealth of Egypt one-half. He had believed in it, had worked for it and how much else! and his dreams and his working had come to naught. He was sick to death--not with illness alone, but with disappointment and broken hopes and a burden beyond the powers of any one man. He saw all now: all the falsehood and treachery and corruption. He realised that Imshi Pasha had given him his hand that he might ruin himself, that his own schemes might overwhelm him in the end. At every turn he had been frustrated--by Imshi Pasha: three years of underground circumvention, with a superficial approval and a mock support. He lay and looked at the glow, the sunset glow of pink and gold on the Libyan Hills, and his fevered eyes scarcely saw them; they were only a part of this last helpless, senseless dream. Life itself was very far away-practical, generous, hot-blooded life. This distance was so ample and full and quiet, this mystery of the desert and the sky was so immense, the spirit of it so boundless, that in the judgment of his soul nothing mattered now. As he lay in reverie, he heard his servant talking: it was the tale of the Mahdi and British valour and hopeless fighting, and a red martyrdom set like a fixed star in a sunless sky. What did it matter--what did it all matter, in this grave tremendous quiet wherein his soul was hasting on? The voices receded; he was alone with the immeasurable world; he fell asleep. IV When he woke again it was to find at his bedside a kavass from Imshi Pasha at Cairo. He shrank inwardly. The thought of the Pasha merely nauseated him, but to the kavass he said: “What do you want, Mahommed?” The kavass smiled; his look was agreeably mysterious, his manner humbly confidential, his tongue officially deliberate. “Efendina chok yasha--May the great lord live for ever! I bring good news.” “Leave of absence, eh?”--rejoined Dimsdale feebly, yet ironically; for that was the thing he expected now of the Minister, who had played him like a ball on a racquet these three years past. The kavass handed him a huge blue envelope, salaaming impressively. “May my life be thy sacrifice, effendi,” he said, and salaamed again. “It is my joy to be near you.” “We have tasted your absence and found it bitter, Mahommed,” Dimsdale answered in kind, with a touch of plaintive humour, letting the envelope fall from his fingers on the bed, so little was he interested in any fresh move of Imshi Pasha. “More tricks,” he said to himself between his teeth. “Shall I open it, effendi? It is the word that thy life shall carry large plumes.” “What a blitherer you are, Mahommed! Rip it open and let’s have it over.”