"But that’s not all. There is something better than that."
"Something that comes closer to us at all events. Do you believe in omens, Helena? That some mystic sense tells us things of which we have no proof, no evidence?"
She bent her head without raising her eyes from the sand.
"Well, I have a sense of some treachery going on in Cairo that Ishmael knows nothing about, and I believe it was just this treachery which led to the idea of his going there at all."
She looked up into his face, and thinking he read her thought, he said quickly—
"Oh, I know—I’ve heard about the letters of the Ulema—that those suggestions of assassination and so forth were signed by the simple old Chancellor of El Azhar. But isn’t it possible that a subtler spirit inspired them? ... Helena?"
"Do you remember that one day in the Citadel I said it was not really Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus, and that there was somebody in Egypt now who was doing what the High Priest of the Jews did in Palestine two thousand years ago?"
"Yes! Something tells me that that subtle old scoundrel is playing a double sword game—with the Ulema and with the Government—and that his object is not only to destroy Ishmael, but, by awakening the ancient religious terror, to ruin England as well—tempt her to ruin her prestige, at all events."
They had reached the margin of the river, and he stopped.
"Well, I am a British soldier still, Helena, even though I am a disgraced one, and I want to ... I want to save the good name of my country."
She could not speak—she felt as if she would choke.
"I want to save the good name of the Consul-General also. He is my father, and though he no longer thinks of me as his son, I want to save him from ... from himself."
"I can do it too," he added eagerly. "At this moment I am perhaps the only man who can. I am nobody now—only a runaway and a deserter—but I can cross the line of fire and so give warning."
"Oh, I know what you are going to say, Helena—I must die for it. Yes! Nobody wants to do that, if he can help it, but I can’t! Listen!"
She raised her eyes to his—they seemed to be ablaze with a kind of frenzy.
"Death was the penalty of what I did in Cairo, and if I did not stay there to be court-martialled and condemned, was it because I wanted to save my life? No; I thought there was nothing left in my life that made it worth saving. It was because I wanted to give it in some better cause. Something told me I should, and when I came to Khartoum I didn’t know what fate was before me, or what I had to do, but I know now. _This_ is what I have to do, Helena—to go back to Cairo instead of Ishmael, and so save England and Egypt and my father and these poor Moslem people, and prevent a world of bloodshed."