Lost trumpet

26 THE LOST TRUMPET
me starving by Nile bank and had brought me home
as his guest. He had been curt and brusque then,
being ashamed of himself and the human race because
of that look he had glimpsed on my face.
“Hungry ?” he had said, as he had stood beside
me upon the bridge where I listened to the passing
trumpets of the sunrise. I had turned round and
regarded him without enthusiasm, seeing a small,
slight man, dark-faced and pale-handed. The hands
had attracted me at once. They were the hands of a
surgeon—indeed, though I had not known it, of
Cairo’s leading gynaecologist.
He had repeated the question. I had nodded.
“But damnably.”
“Come on, then.”
So I had gone with him, wondering and a little
amused, in spite of the emptiness within me. And
Adrian had fed me and listened to me and comforted
me, and had been my friend in days that the locust
had eaten, leaving the remains to the grasshopper
I swore a little to myself. The insects had now
doubled in number. I rang with unnecessary
vehemence upon the handbell that out juts from the
wall of Adrian’s house and stood in the dusty sun-
shimmer till his Greek servant opened the door for
me.
“The doctor is in the garden,” he said, “he and
the two millionaires.”
^Millionaires ?” I had been unprepared for that.
But certainly. They are Americans.”
With that he preceded me into the house, into