"Yes, I shall come back," he said, "and in three months' time. For one
thing, we know--every Englishman in Egypt, too, knows--that this can't
be the end. I want to be here when the work's taken in hand again. I
hate unfinished things."
The sun beat relentlessly upon the plateau; the men, stretched in the
shade, slept; the afternoon was as noiseless as the morning; Durrance
and Mather sat for some while compelled to silence by the silence
surrounding them. But Durrance's eyes turned at last from the
amphitheatre of hills; they lost their abstraction, they became intently
fixed upon the shrubbery beyond the glacis. He was no longer
recollecting Tewfik Bey and his heroic defence, or speculating upon the
work to be done in the years ahead. Without turning his head, he saw
that Mather was gazing in the same direction as himself.
"What are you thinking about?" he asked suddenly of Mather.
Mather laughed, and answered thoughtfully:--
"I was drawing up the menu of the first dinner I will have when I reach
London. I will eat it alone, I think, quite alone, and at Epitaux. It
will begin with a watermelon. And you?"
"I was wondering why, now that the pigeons have got used to our
presence, they should still be wheeling in and out of one particular
tree.
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