THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7071, 12 April 1901, Page 4

THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS.

#-— (By GILBERT PARKER), Author of "The Battle of the Strong," "The Seats of the Mighty," "When Valmont Came to Pontiac," " The Trail of the Sword," etc., etc. CHAPTER I. Plinders's prospects had suddenly ceased •by the productive marriage of a rich uncle late in life ; and then his career began. He went to Egypt at the time when men who knew things had their chance to do things. His information was general and discursive, but he had a real gift for science, an inheritance from a grandfather who received a peerage for abstruse letters written to the "Times" and lectures before the Royal Institution. Besides, he had known well and loved inadvertently the Hbn Lucy Gray, who kept a kind of social kindergarten for confiding man, whose wisdom was as accurate as her face -was fair, her manners simple, and her tongue demure and' biting. Egypt offered an opportunity for a man like Flinders, and he always said that his going there was the one inspiration of his life. -He did not know that the inspiration was that of Lucy Gray. She had* purposely thrown him in the way of General Duncan Pasha, who, making a reputation in Egypt, had been rewarded by a good command in England and a K.C.B. After a talk with the General, who had spent his Egyptian, days in the agreeable strife with native premiei® and hesitating Khedives, Flinders rose dated, with his mission in his hand. After the knock-down blow his uncle had given him, he was in a fighting mood. General Duncan's tale had come at the psychological moment, and hot with inspiration he had gone straight off to Lucy Gray with a Cooks-ticket in his pocket, and told her he was going to spend his life an the service of the pasha and the fellah. When she asked him a little hitingly what form 'his disciplined energy would take, he promptly answered:. " Irrigation !" She laughed in his face softly. "What do you know about irrigation?" she asked. "I can learn it— it's the game to play out there, I'm sure of that," he answered. "It doesn't sound distinguished," she remarked drily. #She had had hopes of iris going into official life, and becoming tie head of a department — Financial Adviser, Secretary of the Interior, or something of the kind. She had a busy and ambitious brain, and she meant really well 'by her friends, when she once- was assured of their "allegiance — it was the oniy return she really made them for their devotion to her selfish self. That Flinders should have cast the die for irrigation eeemed humiliating; but perhaps that was because she had visions of a epade and a wateringcan, and knew nothing of the thing that is before all things in Egypt, its most ancient, its most honoured science, begotten by the goodness of the Goddess of j the Nile! .. : . i Because sire smiled satirically at him, 1 and was unresponsive to his enthusiasm, and gave him no chance to tell her of the nobility of the work in which he was going to put his life ; of the work of the Pharaohs in their day, the hop© of Napoleon in his, andj the creed Mahomet Ali held and practised — that the .wile was Egypt and Egypt was irrigation — because of this !he became angry, said unkind things, drew acid comments upon himself,' and left her with a last good-bye. He did not realise that he had played into the bands of Lucy Gray in a very childish manner. For in scheming that the should go to Egypt she had planned also tihat he should break with her; for she never had any real intention, of marrying him, and yet it was difficult to make him turn his back on her, while at the same time she was too tender to his feelings to turn her back on him. She held that anger was the least injurious of all grounds for sepQTation. In anger there was no . •humiliation. There was something dignified and brave about a quarrel, while a> growing coolness which must end in what the world called \ jilting was 'humiliating. Besides, people who quarrel fend separate may meet again and begin over again; impossible in the other circumstance.