“I had no place in Hamley. Here is my place. Distance has little to do with understanding or affection. I had an uncle here in the East for twenty-five years, yet I knew him better than all others in the world. Space is nothing if minds are in sympathy. My uncle talked to me over seas and lands. I felt him, heard him speak.” “You think that minds can speak to minds, no matter what the distance--real and definite things?” “If I were parted from one very dear to me, I would try to say to him or her what was in my mind, not by written word only, but by the flying thought.” She sat down suddenly, as though overwhelmed. “Oh, if that were possible!” she said. “If only one could send a thought like that!” Then with an impulse, and the flicker of a sad smile, she reached out a hand. “If ever in the years to come you want to speak to me, will you try to make me understand, as your uncle did with you?” “I cannot tell,” he answered. “That which is deepest within us obeys only the laws of its need. By instinct it turns to where help lies, as a wild deer, fleeing, from captivity, makes for the veldt and the watercourse.” She got to her feet again. “I want to pay my debt,” she said solemnly. “It is a debt that one day must be paid--so awful--so awful!” A swift change passed over her. She shuddered, and grew white. “I said brave words just now,” she added in a hoarse whisper, “but now I see him lying there cold and still, and you stooping over him. I see you touch his breast, his pulse. I see you close his eyes. One instant full of the pulse of life, the next struck out into infinite space. Oh, I shall never--how can I ever-forget!” She turned her head away from him, then composed herself again, and said quietly, with anxious eyes: “Why was nothing said or done? Perhaps they are only waiting. Perhaps they know. Why was it announced that he died in his bed at home?” “I cannot tell. When a man in high places dies in Egypt, it may be one death or another. No one inquires too closely. He died in Kaid Pasha’s Palace, where other men have died, and none has inquired too closely. To-day they told me at the Palace that his carriage was seen to leave with himself and Mizraim the Chief Eunuch. Whatever the object, he was secretly taken to his house from the Palace, and his brother Nahoum seized upon his estate in the early morning. “I think that no one knows the truth. But it is all in the hands of God. We can do nothing more. Thee must go. Thee should not have come. In England thee will forget, as thee should forget. In Egypt I shall remember, as I should remember.” “Thee,” she repeated softly. “I love the Quaker thee. My grandmother was an American Quaker. She always spoke like that. Will you not use thee and thou in speaking to me, always?” “We are not likely to speak together in any language in the future,” he answered. “But now thee must go, and I will--”