She shivered, and got up.
"Let us go; I want to go," she said.
"Isn't it wonderful, Ruby?"
"Yes. Where are the Arabs?"
She could no longer quite conceal her secret agitation, but Nigel attributed it to a wrong cause, and respected it. The Sphinx always stirred powerfully the spiritual part of him, made him feel in every fibre of his being that man is created not for time, but for Eternity. He believed that it had produced a similar effect in Ruby. That this effect should distress her did not surprise him, but roused in his heart a great tenderness towards her, not unlike the tenderness of a parent who sees the tears of a child flow after a punishment the justice of which is realized. The Sphinx had made her understand intensely the hatefulness of certain things.
When he had helped her on to her donkey he kept his arm about her.
"Do you realize what it has been to me to see the Sphinx with you?" he whispered.
The night had fallen. In the darkness they went away across the desert.
And the Sphinx lay looking towards the East, where the lights of Cairo shone across the flats under the ridges of the Mokattam.