emotional impact. What mattered for this moment, this absolutely extraordinary moment, was that Ramses was there. The immortal maji was there. He was in the conservatory.
She made her way back down the hall and stood in the doorway looking at him. He wore Father's robe still, though he had removed the shirt with a faint look of distaste for the stiff starched fabric. And his hair had reached its fullness now, a great glossy mane of soft waves that hung down just below the lobes of his ears, with a deep full lock falling again and again on his forehead.
The white wicker table was covered with plates of steaming food. As he read the copy of Punch propped before his plate, he ate delicately with his right hand from the meat here, and the fruit there, and the bread to his left, and the bits of roasted fowl in front of him. It was quite a miracle, in fact, the fastidiousness with which he ate, not touching the knives and forks, though he had loved the ornate designs in the old silver.
He had been reading and eating steadily for the last two hours. He had devoured quantities of food beyond her wild imaginings. It was like fuel to him, it seemed. He had drunk four bottles of wine, two bottles of seltzer, all the milk in the house, and now he was taking occasional gulps of brandy.
He was not drunk; on the contrary, he seemed extraordinarily sober. He had gone through her English/Egyptian dictionary so rapidly that his scanning and turning the pages had made her almost dizzy. The English/Latin dictionary had taken him no more time. The system of Arabic numbers side by side with Roman numerals he apparently absorbed within minutes. The full concept of zero she could not explain, but she had certainly been able to demonstrate it. Then he'd gone through the Oxford English Dictionary with the same haste, turning back and forth, running his finger down column after column.
Of course he was not reading every word. He was getting the gist, the roots, the fundamental scheme of the language; that she understood as he made her name every object in sight and repeated the words rapidly with perfect inflection. He had memorized the names of every plant in the room - ferns, banana trees, orchids, begonias, daisies, bougainvillea. It had thrilled her to hear his rapid inventories repeated moments later without a mistake: fountain, table, plates, china plates, silver, floor tiles, Rita!
Now he was working his way through purely English texts, finishing off the Punch as he had already finished two issues of the Strand magazine, the Harper's Weekly from America, and every issue of The Times in the house,
He scanned the pages with great care, fingers touching words, pictures, even designs as if he were a blind man somehow miraculously able to see through touch. With the same loving attention, he fingered the Wedgwood plates and the Waterford crystal.
He looked up excitedly now as Rita brought him a glass of beer.
"I've got nothing else, miss," she said with a little shrug, standing well back of him as she held out the glass.
He snatched it from her and drained it immediately. He gave her a nod and smile.
"Egyptians love beer, Rita. Get some more, hurry."
Keeping Rita on the go was keeping Rita from losing her mind.
Julie made her way through the ferns and potted trees and took her place at the table opposite Ramses. He glanced up, then pointed to a picture of" the Gibson girl" before him. Julie nodded.
"American," she said.
"United States," he responded.
She was stunned." Yes," she said.
He quickly devoured a sausage whole, and folded another thin slice of bread and ate it in two bites, as he turned the pages with his left hand, scanning a picture of a man on a bicycle. This made him laugh out loud.
"Bicycle," she said.
"Yes!" he said, precisely as she had said it a moment ago. Then he said something softly in Latin.
Oh, she had to take him out, show him everything.
The telephone sounded suddenly, a shrill ring from Father's desk in the Egyptian room. He was immediately on his feet. He followed her into the Egyptian room and stood quite close, looking down at her as she answered it.
"Hello? Yes, this is Julie Stratford." She covered the mouthpiece." Telephone," she whispered." Talking machine." She held the receiver so that he might hear the voice on