Twice he dusted her off, apologizing for the intimacy of this act. Once Camilla dusted him off. She was thorough. She did not apologize.

“Tell me,” said Dr. Lightner. “What reading did you do to prepare for this article you will write about me?”

“I began of course with your own three books,” said Camilla, having purchased them from American tourists who didn't care if they ever heard another word about Egypt again. “My favorite is volume two, in which you discourse about the current events in Egypt as compared to the upheavals of Egypt's magnificent past.”

He said casually, as one to whom the topic is of minor interest, “I am preparing volume four.”

“Dr. Lightner! What an honor it would be were I permitted to gaze at your first draft.”

They reached the summit. Two or three stones of the final tier remained, creating shade and seating. It might have been designed for tired ladies and handsome men to rest and eat an orange. Dr. Lightner had a tin canteen hanging at his waist, and they shared sips of water. Her lips rested where his had been and now when their eyes met, his dropped first.

In the distance was Cairo with minarets and towers. Closer were farms of emerald green, split by canals, dotted with camels and donkeys moving down dusty lanes.

Peace descended over Camilla.

It was not possible to think of revenge and rage. Perhaps rage and revenge had once occurred in Egypt, but today it was serene and Camilla was part of the eternally repeating life of that eternal river.

“This is the stage of a great theater, isn't it?” Camilla said softly. “Cairo is the audience. A million people are crammed into the auditorium that is Egypt.”

“How beautifully you expressed that.” Dr. Lightner pointed to a line as sharp as an edge of paper that divided the green fields from the yellow desert. “Look there. Fields and sand are not friends,” he told her. “They march up to each other and neither will surrender. That sand extends from the Nile to Morocco! To the Atlantic Ocean itself.”

“I should like to travel from oasis to oasis with my camel train,” said Camilla, “and meet the Bedouin.”

“Yes! And write an article about it! I will help you arrange it.” He took her hand for a different purpose than hauling her upward. He took it, she thought, from excitement. From looking forward to her company. He held her hand flat between both of his, as in Egyptian wall paintings.

An emotion as ageless as revenge entered Camilla's heart. She knew suddenly what could cause a lady to lose her balance and topple.

Falling in love.

STRAT: 1899

Twice that day, Strat felt the presence of Annie. Twice he reached into thin air, thinking to grasp her and haul her through to him. Twice he caught only the wind.

She is near, he thought, but a year or a century divides us.