So intensely did she work up her feelings on this subject that, awaking in the middle of the night after Lady Nuneham’s visit, she held out her hands in bed and prayed to God to let His vengeance fall on the Egyptian. "Punish him, O God, punish him, punish, him! My father is dead! My dear father is dead! He was so weak, so ill, so old! O God, let Thy vengeance fall on the coward who killed him! Let Thy hand be on him as long as he lives! Follow him wherever he goes! Destroy him whatever he does! Let him never know another happy hour! Let him be an exile and an outcast to the last hour of his life! O God, hear me, hear me!" Next morning she felt ashamed of this outburst, but less because of its bitterness than its futility, and then with a sense of utter helplessness she began to feel the misery of being a woman. It was a part of the cruel scheme of nature that, however injured and outraged, a woman could do nothing. In the East, above all, she was useless—useless for all purposes of justice or vengeance or revenge. On the Friday afternoon, having made the last preparations for her departure, she was sitting at her desk writing labels for her trunks and portmanteaus, when Mosie dashed in upon her to say that the Princess Nazimah, with sais and footmen and eunuchs, was driving up to the door. A moment later the Princess entered the room. Her plump person, redolent of perfume, was clad in a tussore silk gown, and under the latest of Paris hats her powdered face was plainly visible through the thinnest of chiffon veils. "I hear you are leaving Egypt, so I’ve come to bid good-bye to you," she said, and then taking Helena by the shoulders and looking into her face she cried— "Merciful powers, what has become of your eyes, my beauty? What have you been doing to yourself, my moon?" "Nothing," said Helena. "Nothing? Don’t tell me. You are not sleeping, no, nor eating either. Come, sit down and tell me all about it," and sitting heavily on the sofa, with Helena beside her, she proceeded to do the talking herself. "But, my dear creature, my good girl, this is nonsense. Excuse the word—nonsense! Good God! Is a girl to kill herself because her father dies before her? Fathers do, and why shouldn’t they? Mine did. He was a beast. Excuse the word—a beast. Forty wives—or was it fifty?—but he died nevertheless." With that she lifted her veil, used a smelling bottle, and then began again— "I see what it is, though—your ways are not our ways, and all this comes of your religion. It makes you think about death and the grave, whereas ours tells us to think about life. Your Christianity is a funeral mute, my dear, while Islam is a dancing girl, God bless her! You groan and weep when your kindred die. We laugh and are happy, or if we are not we ought to be. I’m sure I was when my first husband died. ’Thank the Lord he’s gone,’ I said. It’s true I hadn’t lived on the best of terms with him, but then——"