his guest was safely perched behind and Aïda's tail had been tucked in.
"Everybody's used to me and Ada now," said Patrick. "At first the natives collected in crowds. It was free publicity for the byke. Not that I ride it for that. I'm just naturally odd. I'm me own trade-mark; I got a commercial personality."
By this time the engine was in an uproar, and two minutes later the trio were speeding past the deserted terrace of the hotel.
True to his word, Patrick whizzed the length and breadth of Cairo, past mosques and palaces, bearing down on groups of red-slippered natives, for the fun of seeing them scatter. "It amuses the child," he sang back after one close shave.
At the summit of the Mohattam Hill they paused. Paul looked down at the huddle of roofs and streets surmounted by a hundred minarets, and thought of the biblical illustration of the temptation on the mount. Far away beyond the valley of the river, the pyramids were silhouetted like tents against the sky.
The world before his eyes resembled an iridescent bubble. For the incomparable panorama, for the boundless spaciousness of earth and sky, for the living antiquity of it all, the solidity of the stone and the delicacy of pale lights and colours that played over it, he felt emotions too deep for utterance. The prosaic commentaries of his companion he scarcely heard. Relieved from the immediate care of having to find a livelihood, he was free to absorb impressions. Every object, every colour and sonnd, were registering themselves on the sensitive plate of his mind, and he had to make an effort to respond to the other man's announcement that it was time to turn back.
Patrick made straight for the heart of the native quarter.
