He compared his life with hers, or rather with a life he imagined as hers.  And never before had he realized the brightness, even the brilliance, of his life, with its multitudinous changes and activities, its work—­the glorious sweating with the brown labourers in the sand flats at the edge of the Fayyum—­its sport, its friendships, its strenuous and its quiet hours, so dearly valued because they were rather rare.  It was a good life.  It was almost a grand life.  London now, Scotland presently; then the late autumn, the train, the sight of the sea, the cry of the siren, the throbbing of the engines, and presently—­Egypt!  And then the winter of sunshine, and the songs of his workmen, his smiling fellahin, and the reclaiming of the desert.

The reclaiming of the desert!

Nigel was alone in his bedroom in the Savoy.  It was late at night.  He was in pajamas, smoking a cigar by the open window.  He looked down to the red carpet on which his bare feet were set in their red babouches, and suddenly he realized the beauty of what he was doing in the Fayyum.  He had never really thought of it before in this way—­of the reclaiming of the desert; but now that he did think of it, he was glad, and his heart bounded, looking forward in affection to the winter.

And her winter?  What would that be like?

What an immense difference one honest, believing, and therefore inspiring affection must make in a lonely life!  Only one—­that is enough.  And the desert is reclaimed.

He saw the brakes of sugar-cane waving, the tall doura swaying in the breeze, where only the sands had been.  And his brown cheeks glowed, as a hot wave of blood went through them.

Progress!  He loved to think of it.  It was his passion.  That grand old Watts’s picture, with its glow, its sacred glow of colour, in which was genius!  Each one must do his part.

And in that great hotel, how many were working consciously for the cause?

Excitement woke in him.  He thought of the rows and rows of numbered doors in the huge building, and within, beyond each number, a mind to think, a heart to feel, a soul to prompt, a body to act.  And beyond his number—­himself!  What was he doing?  What was he going to do?  He got up and walked about his room, still smoking his cigar.  His babouches shuffled over the carpet.  He kicked them off, and went on walking, with bare, brown feet.  Often in the Fayyum he had gone barefoot, like his labourers.  What was he going to do to help on the slow turning of the mighty wheel of progress?  He must not be a mere talker, a mere raver about grand things, while accomplishing nothing to bring them about.  He despised those windy talkers who never act.  He must not be one of them.  That night, when he sat down “to have it out” with himself, he had done so for his own sake.  He had been an egoist, had been thinking, perhaps not solely but certainly chiefly, of himself.  But in these lonely moments men are generally essentially themselves.  Nigel was not essentially an egoist.  And soon himself had been almost forgotten.  He had been thinking far more of Mrs. Chepstow than of himself.  And now he thought of her again in connection with this turning of the great wheel of progress.  At first he thought of her alone in this connection, then of her and of himself.