Page:Rachel (1887 Nina H. Kennard).djvu/228

 describes her, dressed in a foulard dressing-gown made by herself, serving out the soup, with the majestic air of a Cleopatra, to her guests at lunch, in an old chipped dinner-service she had picked up in the bazaar. As time went on, however, she got up less frequently, and coughed so incessantly that the doctors ordered her up the Nile, hoping that the air of Luxor would do her good. A diabieh was hired and fitted up, and she started on her journey. She attempted to write cheerful letters to her children and mother, describing to her son Gabriel, from Kemneh on the 21st December, how she is sitting at the open window of her cabin, the Nile, like a lake, unruffled by the slightest breeze, stretching round her, while the sun, too hot himself, plunges his rays into the cool water, casting a thousand different lights and colours on the surface of the stream. She says she coughs still, but is drinking health and strength with the balmy air of Upper Egypt; and yet how can health and strength be consolidated with a pulse that varied from 84 to 92?

On her birthday she wrote to her mother, sending, not her birthday kiss, but her kiss of resurrection, astonished as she was, after so much suffering, to find herself still alive. A feverish restlessness and longing to get home pursued her. The doctor, the ruins (she is anchored off the Temple of Thebes), the quiet, all irritated her nerves, and she was possessed with that nostalgie for Paris which pursues all Parisians abroad.

We are sorely tempted to give copious extracts from her letters written at this time. Nothing can be conceived more heart-moving than the alternations from sadness to hope. The plans she makes for the future. She intends to build a country house at Thebes, and