Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/97

Rh a jog-trot life; I am too restless and romantic. I believe my sister and I have now as much excitement and change as most girls, and yet I find everything slow. I long to rush round the world in an express; I feel as if I shall go mad if I remain at home. Now with a soldier of fortune, and a soldier at heart, one would go everywhere, and lead a life worth living. What others dare I can dare. And why should I not? I feel that we women simply are born, marry, and die. Who misses us? Why should we not have some useful, active life? Why, with spirits, brains, and energies, are women to exist upon worsted work and household accounts? It makes me sick, and I will not do it."

In the meantime Richard Burton, all unconscious of the love he had inspired, had gone on his famous pilgrimage to Mecca. As we have seen, he was home from India on a long furlough; but his active mind revolted against the tame life he was leading, and craved for adventure and excitement. He was not of the stuff to play the part of petit maître in the second-rate society of Boulogne. So he determined to carry out his long-cherished project of studying the "inner life of Moslem," a task for which he possessed unique qualifications. Therefore, soon after the Arundells had left Boulogne, he made up his mind to go to Mecca. He obtained a year's further leave to carry out his daring project. In 1853 he left England disguised as a Persian Mirza, a disguise which he assumed with so much success that, when