The single torch which spluttered from the wall as they drank their coffee lighted up faces as strange, withdrawn, and unconsciously secretive as ever gathered to greet a guest.

Dim tales had reached them of this Christian reformer and administrator, scraps of legend from stray camel-drivers, a letter from the Patriarch commanding them to pray blessings on his labours--who could tell what advantage might not come to the Coptic Church through him, a Christian! On the dull, torpid faces, light seemed struggling to live for a moment, as David talked.
It was as though something in their meagre lives, which belonged to undeveloped feelings, was fighting for existence--a light struggling to break through murky veils of inexperience.
Later, in the still night, however--still, though air vibrated everywhere, as though the desert breathed an ether which was to fill men's veins with that which quieted the fret and fever of life's disillusions and forgeries and failures--David's speech with Ebn Ezra Bey was of a different sort.

If, as it seems ever in the desert, an invisible host of beings, once mortal, now immortal, but suspensive and understanding, listened to the tale he unfolded, some glow of pity must have possessed them; for it was an Iliad of herculean struggle against absolute disaster, ending with the bitter news of his grandfather's death.

It was the story of AEdipus overcome by events too strong for soul to bear.

In return, as the stars wheeled on, and the moon stole to the zenith, majestic and slow, Ebn Ezra offered to his troubled friend only the philosophy of the predestinarian, mingled with the calm of the stoic.