For there stood Merle herself in
evening dress--a dress of dark red velvet, with his locket round her
neck and the big plaits of hair rolled into a generous knot low on her
neck. Flowers on the table--the wine set to warm--the finest glass, the
best silver--ptarmigan--how splendid! They lift their glasses filled
with the red wine and drink to each other.
The frozen winter landscape still lingered in their thoughts, but the
sun had warmed their souls; they laughed and jested, held each other's
hands long, and sat smiling at each other in long silences.
"A glorious day to-day, Merle. And to-morrow we die."
"What do you say!--to-morrow!"
"Or fifty years hence. It comes to the same thing." He pressed her hand
and his eyes half closed.
"But this evening we're together--and what could we want more?"
Then he fell to talking of his Egyptian experiences. He had once spent
a month's holiday in visiting ruined cities with Maspero, the great
Maspero himself, going with him to Luxor, to Karnak, with its great
avenues of sphinxes, to El Amarna and Shubra. They had looked on ancient
cities of temples and king's mausoleums, where men thousands of years
dead lay as if lost in thought, with eyes wide open, ready at any moment
to rise and call out: Slave, is the bath ready? There in the middle of
a cornfield rises an obelisk. You ask what it is--it is all that is left
of a royal city. There, too, a hundred thousand years ago maybe, young
couples have sat together, drinking to each other in wine, revelling in
all the delights of love--and where are they now? Aye, where are they,
can you tell me?
"When that journey was over, Merle, I began to think that it was not
mere slime of the Nile that fertilised the fields; it was the mouldered
bodies of the dead.
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