Yes, it's
curious," and he turned his face to the west and the sinking sun. Even
as he looked, the sun dipped behind the hills. The sky above his head
darkened rapidly, to violet; in the west it flamed a glory of colours
rich and iridescent. The colours lost their violence and blended
delicately into one rose hue, the rose lingered for a little, and,
fading in its turn, left a sky of the purest emerald green transfused
with light from beneath rim of the world.
"If only they had let us go last year westward to the Nile," he said
with a sort of passion. "Before Khartum had fallen, before Berber had
surrendered. But they would not."
The magic of the sunset was not at all in Durrance's thoughts. The story
of the letter had struck upon a chord of reverence within him. He was
occupied with the history of that honest, great, impracticable soldier,
who, despised by officials and thwarted by intrigues, a man of few ties
and much loneliness, had gone unflaggingly about his work, knowing the
while that the moment his back was turned the work was in an instant all
undone.
Darkness came upon the troops, the camels quickened their pace, the
cicadas shrilled from every tuft of grass.
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