“Yes, if it would end right here one might say so; but if it goes on and on for a few weeks or months of misery, and then ends in death, I don’t know where we reap the benefit of those improvements of character which it brings. Suppose you escape, what will you do?” The lawyer hesitated, but his professional instincts were still strong. “I will consider whether an action lies, and against whom. It should be with the organisers of the expedition for taking us to the Abousir Rock--or else with the Egyptian Government for not protecting their frontiers. It will be a nice legal question. And what will you do, Sadie?” It was the first time that he had ever dropped the formal Miss, but the girl was too much in earnest to notice it. “I will be more tender to others,” she said. “I will try to make some one else happy in memory of the miseries which I have endured.” “You have done nothing all your life but made others happy. You cannot help doing it,” said he. The darkness made it more easy for him to break through the reserve which was habitual with him. “You need this rough schooling far less than any of us. How could your character be changed for the better?” “You show how little you know me. I have been very selfish and thoughtless.” “At least you had no need for all these strong emotions. You were sufficiently alive without them. Now it has been different with me.” “Why did you need emotions, Mr. Stephens?” “Because anything is better than stagnation. Pain is better than stagnation. I have only just begun to live. Hitherto I have been a machine upon the earth’s surface. I was a one-ideaed man, and a one-ideaed man is only one remove from a dead man. That is what I have only just begun to realise. For all these years I have never been stirred, never felt a real throb of human emotion pass through me. I had no time for it. I had observed it in others, and I had vaguely wondered whether there was some want in me which prevented my sharing the experience of my fellow-mortals. But now these last few days have taught me how keenly I can live--that I can have warm hopes, and deadly fears--that I can hate, and that I can--well, that I can have every strong feeling which the soul can experience. I have come to life. I may be on the brink of the grave, but at least I can say now that I have lived.” “And why did you lead this soul-killing life in England?” “I was ambitious--I wanted to get on. And then there were my mother and my sisters to be thought of. Thank Heaven, here is the morning coming. Your aunt and you will soon cease to feel the cold.” “And you without your coat!” “Oh, I have a very good circulation. I can manage very well in my shirt-sleeves.”