Lost trumpet

THE LOST TRUMPET 123
and blind hopelessness on which the gay lives of
such as herself were built, that refutation undying
of the ethical claims of modern civilization. Perhaps
there was cruelty enough in my uncovering of that
dark world; sadism even. But I could not forget
that bright road from Abu Zabal and the careless
pet in which she had been prepared to risk and end
both her life and mine—our lives which were sweet
and clean and pleasant things in comparison to these
tenebrous existences. So, under its dull, crumbling
balconies, past the bulky English military policeman
on guard, into the most shameful street in Cairo—
almost deserted at that hour, for the traffic is a night¬
time one; yet with here and there soft-stepping
couples of little Greeks on holiday or the saunter of
the tall, raw-boned American youth, looking incom¬
pletely detached and tourist. The smell of the street
was almost a visible miasma. . . . And Pelagueya
looking round it I shall not readily forget my
princess there ! I said, soberly :
Once I had a friend who said this was the
ultimate reality, this street. This is the place.
Princess, where the essential fact is that you are a
woman and I am a man, where the essential fact
between all men and all women is a thing without
disguise. ... It is a humorous place, the Wagh-el-
Berka, and they say it chuckles very loudly at night.”
She looked at me then, wide-eyed. “What about ?”
At love, and Dante’s ‘Vita Nuova’, and tender¬
ness, and the emancipation of women; and at the
love of children and the women who weep their