"When I proposed that we should go away together I supposed your coming
here had been due to a mistake--that my coming here had been due to a
mistake--that your sending that letter into Cairo and my promising to
take Ishmael's place had been due to a mistake--that it had all been a
mistake--a long, miserable line of mistakes."
"And wasn't it?" she asked, walking on with her eyes to the sand.
"So far as we are concerned, yes, but with God ... with God Almighty
mistakes do not happen."
They walked some paces in silence, and then in a still more poignant
voice he said--
"Don't you believe that, Helena? Wasn't it true, what Ishmael said
yesterday? Can you possibly believe that we have been allowed to go on
as we have been going--both of us--without anything being meant by
it?--all a cruel, stupid, merciless, Almighty blunder?"
"Well?"
"Well, think of what would have happened if we had been allowed to carry
out our plan. Ishmael would have gone into Cairo as he originally
intended, and he would have been seized and executed for conspiracy.
What then? The whole country--yes, the whole country from end to
end--would have risen in revolt. The sleeping terror of religious hatred
would have been awakened. It would have been the affair of El Azhar
over again--only worse, a thousand-fold worse."