culture, she felt that neither of them had assimilated the mysterious land of the ancient river. She did not find Egypt—Egypt itself, that is to say, Egypt assimilated—in the neat list of dynasties of which Edgar had made two copies, one of which he pinned up above the washing-stand in her cabin, and the other beside the looking-glass in his, so that he could learn it while shaving; nor was she any nearer attaining it when they said the dynasties to each other at breakfast, nor when they rode across the noon-struck desert to where, on the grey hill-side, Hatasoo (eighteenth dynasty, succeeded by Thothmes III.) had raised the temple of Deir-el-Bahari. Nor did Egypt pass into her blood even when on the deck of their dahabeeah after dinner, with the stars burning large and low down to the horizon, and waking points of wavering reflection in the steel-coloured water of the river, Edgar repeated to her in his precise and even voice Shelley's "Ozymandias' Sonnet." Indeed, one thing only in Egypt, if the truth was known (which it was not to her husband), had made any really vital impression on her. That was when one evening at Cairo they had gone together to a café to see native-dancing. It was a tawdry affair enough in itself: there were a couple of Nubian girls laden with brass necklaces, and blue beads and wisps of staring Manchester-dyed clothing, who performed the dance de ventre to the accompaniment of a couple of drums stretched over half a tortoise-shell, and three or four squealing, tuneless pipes. The floor was sanded, the walls, decked with a few prints better not looked at very closely, and soiled fragments of embroidery, streamed with moisture, and two or three dozen natives, with a stray tourist or so like themselves, squatted on the floor, and watched the dancers with growing excitement. The air was hot and stifling, but somehow genuine: it was heavy with the smell of cheap incense and street-scrapings and cigarettes. They had scarcely been in the place for a minute, for Edgar had taken her arm and led her out again as soon as the style of the entertainment was manifest to him, and had apologized to her afterwards for not finding out about it first, and had spoken severely to their dragoman for letting her ladyship go into such a place. And all the time Lucia had longed to stop; there was nothing shocking in it: it was merely primitive. And it was real, it was human; it was, though not ancient Egypt, modern Egypt, and in that one moment modern Egypt had become more real to her than ancient Egypt had ever been, even though they evoked its spectre with neat dynastic lists, endless
