My land! What a thing to say about his own mother, Mumma cried, and indeed, Colonel Lawrence snickered like a naughty boy aware of his transgression.

Perhaps, I thought, I am not the only one whose mother whispers unwelcome commentary. To my own surprise, I said, “I take it you learned cynicism at home, Colonel Lawrence?”

Another giggle, this one with a darker note that confirmed my guess. “Why Cairo then,” he asked, “if not to spread the faith?

Well, I could hardly say, Mark Twain advised me to travel. I searched, and found a different truth. “The war, you know. The influenza. I think— Well, one needs to make new memories, don’t you agree?”

For a little time, he seemed quite far away. So many veterans had that look. “Yes,” he said finally, blinking himself back into the present. “Yes. Well put.”

We fell into an instant friendship, our conversation built on the scaffolding of our shared regard for Lillie. “I shall never forget how welcoming and kind she was,” Lawrence told me. “I was a penniless undergraduate, but she treated me like a prince.”

He was just suggesting that we meet for tea the next afternoon when the towering woman he called Gerty took her place at his side. Deliberately, I think, she put an arm over his shoulder, in a gesture that was both maternal and proprietary. In that pose, she asked, “And who have we here, dear boy?”

Colonel Lawrence moved away from her touch, becoming formal and adult. “Miss Gertrude Bell, may I introduce Miss Agnes Shanklin? I knew her sister, Lillian, before the war. Miss Shanklin: Miss Bell, who knows everyone and everything Middle East. What have negotiations accomplished, Gert?”