Now he must go steadily forward amongst the
crowds like a man that has business of moment, dreading conversation
lest his tongue should betray him, listening ever for the name of Yusef
to strike upon his ears. Despair kept him company at times, and fear
always. But from the sharp pangs of these emotions a sort of madness
was begotten in him, a frenzy of obstinacy, a belief fanatical as the
dark religion of those amongst whom he moved, that he could not now fail
and the world go on, that there could be no injustice in the whole
scheme of the universe great enough to lay this heavy burden upon the
one man least fitted to bear it and then callously to destroy him
because he tried.
Fear had him in its grip on that morning three days after he had left
Abou Fatma at the wells, when coming over a slope he first saw the sand
stretched like a lagoon up to the dark brown walls of the town, and the
overshadowing foliage of the big date palms rising on the Nile bank
beyond. Within those walls were the crowded Dervishes. It was surely the
merest madness for a man to imagine that he could escape detection
there, even for an hour. Was it right, he began to ask, that a man
should even try? The longer he stood, the more insistent did this
question grow.
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