"And peace—rest I think I mean—is it in your Tents of Purple and Gold?"

"Peace is to be found within the Temple of Anubis, who is the god of Death, and there only."

The girl shivered and lifted her head, as from some part of the hotel there drifted the wonderful desert love-song which begins:

"My love for thee is as the sun at noon——"

Then she looked at the man whose face she had not plainly seen in the passing of the hour.

"How am I to believe you? Will you give me a sign, something, anything, so that I shall know that if I ever want to visit the wonderful tents I shall find them?"

She only spoke to gain time.

Knowing that outside the curtain there stretched the path across the Field of Content, she deliberately placed her foot upon the desert sand, and whilst common sense urged her to get out of the room, she listened to temptation and lingered, throwing safety to the four winds, opening wide her arms to danger.

"By the sign of the black stallion who awaits thee at dawn near all that remaineth upright of the City of On, shalt thou find the Tents of Purple and Gold."

"But I don't ride any more," said Damaris. "I can't find a horse, a good one, and I don't know where the City of On is."

"Thou shall know, thou ivory casket to which love is the key. And if thou see'st one afar off as thou ridest into the desert at dawn, fear not; for behold, is thy beauty spoken of, yea, even in the harem, and it were not wise for thee to ride alone."

The girl put out her hand towards the silken curtain.

"How do you know who I am?"

"By thy voice, which is as the wind of dawn."

She hesitated, divided between a desire to know more about this man and an innate courtesy which forbade her questioning.

"Search not, ask not, woman," said the fortune-teller, divining her thoughts, "for I am not worthy of thy notice. Were I to cross thy threshold, were I to lay my hand upon thee, as surely should I pollute thee. There is that within me which cries aloud, urging me to lead thy feet upon the burning desert sands; and, again, there is that within me which would fain force thee, for thy happiness, upon the path running through the Field of Content. Yet, behold, art thou all safe with me."

"Could I help you? If you were to tell me your trouble, perhaps it would be easier?"

"The moment is not yet, woman, but, being a teller of tales, even as I am a teller of fortunes, one day will I sit at thy feet and, for the passing of an hour, will tell thee the story of the Hawk of Egypt."

"You have made this hour pass so pleasantly that I should—should like to—to give you something so as—as to show you how pleased I am. But I have nothing with me, nothing."

She put out her hands and turned them down.

The man looked down at her for a moment with blazing eyes.

"Give me—as a reward—Allah—give me——" They stood quite still as the torrent surged, about them. "Give me the ring from off thy finger," he added, gently.

The girl held out her hand.

"Take it, though it seems a poor reward for all you have promised me."

"Nay, give it thou to me."

She slipped it off and held it out, showing a bruise across the back of her hand.

"Allah!" whispered the man, "that I should mark thee thus—and yet, in love—in love!"

He took the ring, of which the dull-gold setting held an emerald in the form of a scarab with heartshaped base.

The fortune-teller turned it over in the palm of his hand, then held it out.

"Nay, this I cannot take. I thought it was a ring from the bazaar to go with thy dress of fantasy. Behold, it is an amulet of the heart, of—nay, I cannot tell thus quickly of what dynasty—with words of power engraved upon it which read thus:

"'My heart, my mother; my heart, my mother. My heart whereby I came into being.'"

The girl listened entranced, touching the ring with finger-tips which felt as snow-flakes upon the man's hand.

"What is an amulet of the heart?"

"In the days of Ancient Egypt, when the heart had been taken from the dead body for purposes of preservation, an amulet, a scarab, sometimes heart-shaped, was placed within the body to ensure it life and movement in the new life."

They both stood looking down upon the jewel, the girl's finger-tips resting upon the man's hand.

"Keep it," she said softly. "Keep it."

"I will keep it to replace that which has gone from me. I will restore it to its shape, I will take from it the golden setting of the ring. I will wear it upon my breast." And, bending, he gently raised the yashmak in both hands and pressed his forehead to the few inches which had rested above her crimson mouth.



CHAPTER IX

"Love is one and the same in the original, but there are a thousand copies of it, and, it may be, all differing from one another."

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

Ben Kelham, disguised as Rameses the Great, laid a hand upon the girl's shoulder as, passing to the left of the tent, she walked slowly towards the door leading to the grounds, whilst sounds of wrath came from the serried ranks of those who wished to pry into the future.

The fortune-teller had sent word that there would be no more reading of horoscopes or hands that evening, and had absented himself therewith through a back entrance.

"You have been a long time," said Ben Kelham. He looked magnificent as the great Sestoris, who had stood well over six feet in the days of Ancient Egypt. "What was the man telling you?"

Damaris was disturbed, and it was most unfortunate that, under the spur of inquietude, he should have chosen just this occasion and this moment to allow a hint of authority to creep into his voice and a shadow of proprietorship to show in his actions.

"How do you know who I am?" parried the girl coldly, as she shrugged the proprietory hand off her shoulder.

"Wellington gave you away. He followed your trail to the tent and sat growling at everybody until I came along and removed him."

"I wish you would leave the dog alone," said Damaris, with a certain amount of acerbity. "He is my custos."

"But that is not the kind of guardian you want, Damaris—you are too beautiful, you know. Let us sit here; it's lovely and warm, and the stars look just like diamonds, don't they?"

"I would rather walk," said Damaris, who was longing to sit down.

But she sat down when Ben Kelham took her by the elbow and led her to the seat; and she sat quite still when he suddenly took both her hands.

"Oh! don't, Ben," she said, when he pulled them up against his heart. "I can't stand any more to-night." And he, being over-slow in the uptak', failed to catch her in this slip of the tongue.

"I want you for my wife, dear," was all he said.

Then Damaris pulled her hands away and, removing the yashmak, looked up into his face, whilst he drew a breath sharply at the beauty of her.

"I love you so, dear! I'm a clumsy fool at speaking, but I could show you how I love you. I want to marry you and take you right away home. Do you know, I—I don't know how to explain it, but I—somehow feel you are in danger out here. I—will you———?"

Damaris looked to the right and looked to the left, hesitated and chose the middle path.

"I can't answer you now, Ben. I'm—I'm not sure about loving you, and, of course, one can't marry without that on both sides, can one?"

Oh, the blessed little ignoramus!

"Besides," she added as an afterthought, "I'm so young, and so are you."

"Oh, Damaris! Surely you don't want to wait until you find someone who's had lots of experience, which only means that he hasn't been playing the game as far as his future wife is concerned and will come to you like a ready-made suit returned from the cleaner's. The Kelhams always marry young, and our brides are always very young. That's why, I think, we're so strong and long-lived." He veered suddenly from the mazy subject of eugenics and pleaded hard, persuasively, stubbornly.

But Damaris, just as stubbornly, shook her head.

"Besides, Ben, this is unexpected. I haven't seen anything of you since I have been out; surely, if you love me so, you would have come over more often to—to—prepare the way."

She unashamedly exposed her hurt, whilst the man inwardly called himself every kind of a fool for having listened to another's voice upon a subject as vital and tricky as love.

Still he urged and pleaded, being of those who, refusing to take No as an answer, usually succeed in attaining their desire.

A wearisome process, but well worth while once in a lifetime, whatever kind of a clutter those first cousins, obstinacy, stubbornness and strong will cause you to accumulate about your feet at other times.

"I don't know enough to marry," persisted the girl. "I want to know what love really is, first."

"Oh! but, dear, I can teach you all you want to know," replied the man, in the customary all-sweeping manner of the male.

"But I want to know all about the different kinds."

"There are no different kinds, Damaris. There is only one sort."

"Then explain this to me."

It seemed that two months before the girl had left England, she had found the tweeny, Lizzie Stitch by name, sobbing over the cinders in her sitting-room grate. The besmirched little face, like a sodden little pudding, had been covered with grimy hands, and the thin little chest had heaved under the scanty cotton blouse and the stress of the tale of betrayal and desertion.

"I didn't know, miss. I didn't do it purposelike for a lark. I did think it was love, real love what—what is h'always pardinned. Well, miss, if you think it wise to force 'im, I'll do what you say, though it's not about meself as I'm worrying; it's 'cause I must have a father for the kid. I couldn't put it out, an' lose it, not h'ever so."

Then had come about a strange scene of transformation. Confronted by Damaris with a riding-whip in one hand, a special license in the other, and Wellington at her heels, the fox-faced young man had professed a desire to marry the tweeny on the spot.

Then had been granted a seventh-heaven glimpse of what love, real love, can be, to the tweeny maid, changing her into a veritable spitfire, who had turned and rent the fox-faced youth.

"I wouldn't 'ave you, nohow, no, not if yer were the larst man on earth, not 'alf I wouldn't. I'll get through my trouble, miss, all right, an' by meself, thanking you kindly for troubling, an' I'll wait until Mister Right comes along; that's what I'll do, Mister Runaway."

And when Mr. Runaway had hinted that Mr. Right might kick at being called upon to shoulder the encumbrances of others, she had snatched the special license from her young mistress, torn it into bits, flung it into the foxy face and blazed into a big-hearted, big-minded, all-understanding little tweeny maid of a woman.

"I said Mr. Right, didn't I, yer bloomin' chuckhead? 'E'll unnerstand that it was all done in mistake, an' not by preference, so to speak. An' unnerstandin', he'll forgive. Lots of them mistakes are made by girls like me"—thumping of washed but still grimy hand above gallant little heart—"through swipes like you. Life's full of 'em down our way. But life's love, and love's life, and you can't get away from that, that yer can't. And I'd raver die wiv my love shut up 'ere"—more thumps above gallant little heart—"than throw it away on a louse like you, that I would, not 'arf!"

Ben Kelham said nothing, and there fell a silence between the two, though the Egyptian night was as full of noise as it ever is in the big cities of the East.

"What did she mean, Ben," said Damaris at last, "by that love which understanding can forgive even—even her trouble?"

And to Ben Kelham came the tweeny's seventh-heaven glimpse of the understanding of real love.

He rose and swept Damaris, a-thrill at the mastery, into his arms, where he held her as he might have held a child.

"That, dear,"—and he spoke choosing the simplest words, just because he knew no others, "that means that if you said you loved me, and I—if I ever found you in a—how shall I put it?—in—no matter how compromising a situation—that I should love you just the same, because I should know that, although to all appearances you—you might have sinned, yet the real you, the pure, honourable, perfect woman in you, could not show the smallest stain. Do you understand?"

"Almost," whispered the girl, as she lay still in the arms that held her as a child.

"You've got to understand. Listen! It may sound brutal, but you've got to understand my love for you. Supposing you disappeared, as Englishwomen do sometimes in the East. Supposing I searched, and found you, and you—you were—you were like the little tweeny girl. What should I do? Why, Damaris, unless you came to me and confessed to sin, I'd marry you, loving you, understanding you, without asking any questions."

"Without asking any explanation?"

"Yes, dear. Yes. Because I love you——"

"And you would forgive me?"

"But, dear, there wouldn't be any need for forgiveness; the real, pure you would not have done anything wrong."

Then he blundered.

Like most big men, he was diffident; he underestimated the attraction of his strength allied to a very gentle courtesy; in fact, bound up in his love for Damaris, he had never given it a thought excepting to curse the awkwardness of his body and the slowness of his speech. He knew nothing of the honesty which looked out of the eyes; the quiet strength of his movements and speech; the feeling of confidence he inspired.

He was not given to self-analysis; he loved the sun in the heavens, the grass under foot and the traditions of his house too much to waste time on that kind of thing.

So that, fearing to have hurt the girl or bored the girl, he plumped her on her feet, when he could have won her and saved her and others, including himself, a mint of pain if he had only just crushed her up to his heart and kissed her.

She stood quite still, with that dazed little feeling which falls upon one who has entered the wrong room.

"I'm not going to bother you any more, dear," he said, watching for the flash of relief which did not cross the beautiful face.

"What are you going to do?"

"There has come a report of lion somewhere near Karnak. I think I shall run down and have a look round. I thought of going on to Nairobi once I was really fit, so have got all my shooting gear with me. But, remember, you have only to send for me, and I will come. And don't try to run away, Damaris." And his voice was stern as he took her by the shoulders and drew her towards him. "You are mine! I'm letting you go now because you want to learn about life, and that you can't do if you have a man always on your heels. You will learn all right, dear, and suffer a bit, dear, but you will come to me in the end.

"I can't offer you the witchery and colouring and poetry of the East, but I do offer you the biggest love there has ever been in a man's heart for a woman and———"

A troupe of riotous guests came streaming down the path.

"One o'clock!" they shouted. "One o'clock. Masks off; masks off!"

The two walked slowly towards them.

"You would like a lion's skin, wouldn't you?" he asked eagerly, and stared amazed at the reproachful, hurt eyes which looked back at him just as the dancers swooped upon her.

A lion's skin! When she was craving for the strength of his arms about her, and the tower of his love behind her, from the top of which she could safely make monkey-faces of derision at Life, standing with lesson-books in one hand and a cane in the other.

She turned her back on him and entered the ballroom, and he went back to the seat in the garden, unconscious of the woman who watched.

And as the merry little crowd ran laughing into the hotel, the duchess, with mind intent on a cigarette, slipped out of another door and hurried as fast as her outrageous heels would allow her to a seat under the date-palms.

She took a Three Castles from the jewelled Louis XV snuff-box, rasped a match on the sole of one little crimson shoe, lit her cigarette, and studied the slipper.

Then she turned her head and saw a man, an Arab, standing beside the seat.

There had been no sound; just out of the dark he had suddenly materialised in the startling, silent way of the East.

Well does it behove us to remember that we have claimed the privilege of giving lessons in morality, culture, good-breeding, manners, in fact, in one word, civilisation to the world at large.

In the glaring sun of an Eastern mid-day you can sit with your feet figuratively or literally on the table, if it pleases you; it will but be accounted as one more eccentricity unto you; but in the shadows, an' you would retain the position of teacher to the world at large, keep the heels on the rail of your chair; for there are ears and eyes a-many in the shadows and behind the silken curtain.

But it took a good deal more than the sudden appearance of a native to make the old lady start.

She put out her cigarette with the toe of a red shoe, took another from the snuff-box, rasped a match—not on the sole of her foot this time—lit the fragrant weed and looked at the man, who salaamed.

"Yes?" she said courteously.

"I am the fortune-teller, great lady. In the sand, by the stars, or the lines of your jewelled hand, if in your graciousness you will permit me, I will tell you your future."

"My son, behold. I am near the sunset, the moment approaches when my tired feet will advance still further upon the bridge which leadeth me to my God and your God. What is past I know; what is, is; what is to be, is so near that, behold, sometimes in the stillness of the night I hear the angels whispering as they take counsel as to the moment when, one shall tap me upon the shoulder, saying, 'Come!'"

He sank to the ground just at her feet and looked up in the splendid old face with an agony of hurt born of misunderstanding in his own, so that, suddenly realising that her refusal had been taken for antipathy, she stretched out her hand, which, having first pulled a corner of his white mantle between, he held upon the back of his own.

"Tell me, then, of those I love."

The fortune-teller looked her straight in the face.

"Thy hands are full of love-flowers, white woman; thy head is crowned with them; thy feet pass upon them; thou art all love. Yea! even though there are many upon the bridge who, having preceded thee, await thy coming, yet art thou surrounded with love. And in the flowers in thy hands is there one which thou cherishest, and for which thou fearest.

"Fear not, wise woman; let thy heart beat tranquilly at dawn, at noon and at the setting of the sun; for it is written that no harm shall befall the flower, no stain shall mark the ivory petals of innocence; no rude hand pluck it before its time. Thou art not the only one to love the flower, wise woman. There is one also who loveth it and watcheth it and will pluck it in due season; there is yet another who loveth and watcheth, but from a great, great distance. If by the grace of Allah, who is God, the flower should be placed even for the passing of an hour within the hands of him who watcheth from afar, I tell thee, for so it is written, fear not, for no harm shall befall the fragrant blossom."

The old woman nodded her head so that the diamond leaves glistened, and smiled gently and lifting her hand pulled aside the corner of the mantle, and laid her hand again on his.

"Nay, touch me not, for fear I shall pollute thee, thou woman of one great race; thou descendant of one unbroken line; thou noble with unblemished shield."

Then she leant right forward, and laid both hands upon his shoulders. "My son, my son, perchance could a very wise, very old woman help thee in thy stress, for behold, she understands all things, having herself passed through the troubled waters of life."

The fortune-teller shook his head as he gripped the little hands upon his shoulders.

"For me there is no help, wise, all-loving woman. But she who loves me, she whom I love and for whom I would die, even breaks her heart through me, her first-born, in my desert home. Her beautiful eyes are full of tears, she lifts not her head, and my father, whom I honour, is far from her in her stress. Perchance in the golden mint of thy heart hast thou a few coins of patience, wisdom and love to spare."

As the old woman got slowly to her feet, the man sprang up beside her.

"My son, though thou drainest a fortune from the mint of Love at dawn, yet is it still there at eventide," she whispered as she raised her jewelled hand to his shoulders and pulled him down towards her. "My son, thou art my son, and I have faith in and a great love for thee and thine."

And she kissed him upon the forehead, whilst the tears stood in her eyes, and turned towards the house, without noticing a man and a woman sitting in the shadows at the far side of the grounds.

For the woman who watched was Zulannah the harlot, who had gained an easy admission under the secrecy of her veils and the potency of backschish.

And as Ben Kelham had sat down, she had crept quietly from behind the palms to stand, a shimmering bundle of silks and satins, in front of the man who looked up in annoyance, and then smiled.

You really couldn't be rude to anything so tantalisingly beautiful, especially when the lady of your choice has just shown a certain lamentable want of appreciation in regard to your person and propositions.

"It's one o'clock, fair lady; you must unmask."

And he uttered a cry of astonishment.

Zulannah had lifted her veil.

And the moments sped as she wove the golden web of beauty and desire and love, into which, however, the clumsy fly refused to be enticed.

But Ben Kelham, for all his slowness, was no fool, and understanding that the woman was offering him something outside her usual wares, and understanding also the danger of rousing the wrath of such a woman, he dealt with the matter as delicately as he could.

"—Come but once to my entertainments," she urged. "My girls shall dance for thee, my animals fight for thee."

The man shuddered, sick to the soul at the thought of the means by which this woman enslaved her suitors.

"Am I not beautiful?" she added.

She made her last bid; she stepped back into the moonlight and unwound her veils from about her, standing, palpitating, trembling under the possession of her strange love.

Beautiful! She was a dream—yet beside her beauty the pure loveliness of Damaris Hethencourt would have shown like the work of an Old Master beside a coarse copy.

But what will you?

Some like the snow-peaks and some the stretching plain; others the turbulent ocean, and yet others the farmyard with its rural sights and sounds. Thank goodness for it! Just imagine the lamentation throughout the world if love, like the couturiere set fashions for the seasons!

"Love dictates that women, this season, shall resemble the dazzling peaks of the Himalayas."

And we looking as the majority of us do look!

Not that we should really be downhearted about it. Not a bit. Only let the decree go forth, and every one of us, at the end of a week or so, would by hook or by crook have acquired a distinctly peak-like appearance.

But Kelham looked up, looked long, and smiled.

"You are beautiful—very beautiful—the most beautiful woman I have seen—save one."

Zulannah recognised her defeat and in a whirl of rage and scented veils disappeared through the talik palms.

And, arrived at her house, she stormed through court and rooms and down to the bottom of the scented garden, leaving a trail of terror-stricken servants lying face downwards in her wake.

She leant over the marble balustrade and looked down into the huge pit with marble walls and sanded floor. All around it were cages in which were confined great beasts; and alcoves in which she and her guests, behind iron bars, would sit, when sated with love and feasting, to watch the animals fight to the death.

Then she ran quickly down the flight of marble steps, and clapped her hands.

From some dark corner a shape came running, ambling like some gigantic ape, maintaining an upright position by means of an occasional thrust at the ground with the knuckles of the left hand. The small eyes in his large head blinked craftily at the beautiful woman—its own mate being well-nigh as simian as itself—; it shuffled on its huge feet and pulled at its gaudy raiment with abnormally long fingers. The monstrosity had been nicknamed "Bes," after the monstrous dwarf god of Ancient Egypt, by someone—the nationality of whom is of no account—who had balanced the ardour of his studies with hours of leisure in the bazaar. The beasts, aroused doubtlessly by the scent of the thing which brought them meat, roared and flung themselves against the bars of the cage.

They were half-starved.

Unlike most of her class, Zulannah was mean. She was a niggard in things which did not concern herself.

So that, to feed his numerous progeny of repulsive simian shape, the keeper of the cages starved the beasts. Not that Zulannah cared one iota for their hunger or suffering; it made them fight the merrier for a bit of meat.

And she sat in her ebony chair close to the bars, with a brazier beside her, and laughed delightedly as the liberated lion flung itself at the cages in which roared its wretched brethren.

And then the great beast stopped suddenly in the middle of the den, growling softly, snuffing the air. Then, with heartrending roar hurled itself straight at the bars behind which she sat.

Was she afraid? Not one bit. She was behind the bars. She laughed aloud and clapped her hands, standing just out of reach of the paw which tried to reach her.

Back across the sand rushed the animal, and then with all its might crashed against the barrier.

A look of horror swept the woman's face—the middle bar had bent. She sensed her danger, but kept her nerve. Without hesitating, she turned to the brazier at her side, carefully selected a handle well wrapped about, and, turning again swiftly, thrust the red-hot point down the lion's maw.

'Twere best not to describe the rest of the awful scene in which a woman safe behind bars clapped her hands over the pain she had caused.

But is it surprising that Zulannah's enemies were legion?



CHAPTER X

"The wind that sighs before the dawn Chases the gloom of night; The curtains of the East are drawn And suddenly—'tis light."

SIR LEWIS MORRIS.

The desert stretched before Damaris.

As a lover, clad in golden raiment, in quick pursuit of his love with dusky hair and starry eyes across a field of purple iris, Day flinging wide his arms leaped clear of the horizon which lies like a string across the sandy wastes. Gathering her draperies, hiding her starry jewels in misty scarves, Night fled in seeming fear, leaving behind her a trail of sweet-scented, silver-embroidered purple, grey and saffron garments, which melted in the warmth of love.

But leap he from the horizon ever so quickly, don he his most brilliant armour and pursue he ever so hastily, yet, save for two short hours when he may barely touch her hem, Night stands ever mockingly, beckoning, just out of reach.

O thrice-wise woman! How else would there be pursuit?

And Damaris laughed aloud from sheer content as she touched the coal-black stallion with her heel, and held him, fretting, eager to be away over the sand, to wherever Fate pointed.

Half-believing, half-doubting the words of the fortune-teller, this early morning following hard upon her arrival in Heliopolis she slipped from her room, wakened the astounded night-porter of the Desert Palace Hotel, and demanded a car to be brought upon the instant. And lucky it was for her that she made one of the ducal party, for nothing else would have procured her her heart's desire at that untoward hour before dawn.

With Wellington beside her, she drove hard along the deserted high-road towards the village of Makariyeh where, under a sycamore, 'tis said the Virgin and Child rested on their Flight into Egypt.

The head-lights seemed to hurl the shadows back as she raced down the Sharia el-Misalla towards the ruins of old Heliopolis, which is all that remains of the great seat of learning, the biblical City of On. And the sky lightened way down in the east as she drove along the outer edge of the fort to the Obelisk, known to the Arab as el-Misalla.

And there the words of the fortune-teller came true, for fretting and fuming in an endeavour to unseat his sayis, who rode him native-wise, without his feet in the stirrups, rearing and backing at the sound of the engine throbbing in the gloom, was the coal-black stallion of Unayza.

Damaris did not cast a look at the Obelisk. She had eyes only for the beautiful beast which, seemingly, she was to ride on a single rein and a wisp of a saddle. Standing sixteen hands, born of the desert, nervous and self-willed, he was no fit mount for a woman, and a gleam of anxiety flashed across the sayis's face as he measured the slender girl with his eye and re-adjusted the stirrup-leather.

"In the name of the hawk-headed Ra-Harakht."

The servant salaamed as he mechanically repeated the unintelligible sentence which had been drummed into him by his master; and Damaris smiled and replied in the servant's tongue, to his amazement, and walked up close to el-Sooltan, holding out a flat palm with sugar upon it.

It took some time before he snuffled her hand, and then only by stratagem she mounted, swinging herself in a bound to the saddle as the groom slipped to the ground on the off-side; upon which el-Sooltan wheeled sharply and headed straight for the village of Khankah, which is the outskirt proper of the desert.

For two and a half miles, at a tearing gallop, the girl made no attempt to show any authority. But once on the very edge of the desert she did, for this was the longed-for moment of her life, when alone, free, she should ride out into the unknown; and she had no inclination or intention of being hurled through that moment like a stone from a catapult. Sooltan, behaving like a very demon, tried his best to unseat the light weight upon his back by the simple and usually so effective methods of rearing, plunging and bucking; but Damaris only smiled and shouted as she looked towards the east, caring not a jot for any vagary, so content was she.

But as the sun leapt clear of the horizon, she gave one cry, touched the stallion lightly upon the neck, gave him his head, and was across the desert, unmindful of an Arab who, some distance away, which, in the desert, is really no optical distance at all, headed a grey mare, thoroughbred and of mighty endurance, in the same direction.

Where is there anything to compare to riding across the desert at dawn? At dawn, when to your right and to your left march phalanxes of ghostly shapes, which maybe are the shadows of the night, or maybe, as says the legend, the ghosts of the many long-dead kingdoms buried in oblivion and the relentless sands; when the whistling of the wind is as the shouting of men and the thunder of your horse's hoofs as the rolling of many drums, calling you through the power of past centuries and the ecstasy of the solitude in your heart, out to the mystery of the plains.

Mystery, fascination, spell, lure, call of the desert. All fine words, but hopeless to explain that which has lured more than one white woman out into the golden wilderness to the wrecking of her soul; and which has nothing whatever to do with the pseudo-psychic waves which trick us into such pitiable hysteria and hallucination.

But there is no mystery about that which called Damaris. It was the joy of youth, the salt of novelty, the exhilarating sympathy between horse and rider; she shouted as she seemingly rode straight into the massed colouring of the sunrise; she lifted her face to the golden banners flung across the sky and turned in the saddle and looked back at the hem of Night's garments disappearing down in the west.

She was still a child, for those auxiliaries, Love and Life, had not yet lain hand upon her; they had but pulled aside the veil from before her eyes for one brief second, and she, dazzled by the glimpse, had pulled it back hastily. Neither was there anything to tell her that, upon a not very far distant day, the veil would be torn from her, leaving her to be well-nigh blinded by the radiance of the greatest light in the world.

And she rode carelessly, without a thought to the passing of time or to the ever-increasing speed of el-Sooltan, who was all out in an endeavour to find his stable, also his companions, from whom he had been parted for many weary weeks.

That they happened to be in the Oasis of Khargegh, some few hundred miles down the Nile, he was not to know; he only knew that the desert was his home and that in it and of it was his happiness to be found; and it was only when Damaris turned to look at the ruins of the City of On from a far distance that she discovered that they had disappeared in a mist which was merely the combination of the distance and the waters of the oasis evaporating in the morning sun.

She tried to pull the stallion, gently at first, and then with all her might, but to no purpose; for nothing but the voice of his master or his own particular sayis could stop el-Sooltan once he had got the light bit between his teeth; and of the death from thirst which awaited him and his rider upon this particular venture if he continued in his obstinacy he had, of course, no warning.

"What a nuisance," said Damaris, as she looked round the great yellow plain which stretched, a carpet of level sand, to the west and under her horse's feet and broke to the east into a chain of hummocks, piled by the last sandstorm which had caused such devastation in the nomad tribes and such annoyance to the visitors at Heliopolis.

She felt no fear, only an increasing vacuum beneath her waistbelt and distress for the worry her long absence might cause her godmother.

"And Well-Well will have chewed everything chewable in the car, also the legs of the sayis, by the time I get back," she exclaimed. "And I can't do anything—I've irrevocably given el-Sooltan his head. It's no use slipping from the saddle, because I couldn't walk back. I can't . . ."

She broke off suddenly, rose in the stirrups and waved. And a more radiant picture of youth you could not have wished to see in a lifetime.

"A village!" she shouted. "Camels, palms, water. An oasis with tents; women and children and men. Come round, Sooltan, come round." And she pulled with all her strength, and still to no avail, for, oblivious of the peaceful, verdant patch, the mighty animal forged ahead.

"Well, I shall have to drop from the saddle, let Sooltan go, and walk over to them. They are sure to be friendly and . . ."

She had just slipped her foot from the stirrup when, clear and insistent, there came a ringing cry.

Some way off, the Hawk of Egypt had followed her from the village of Khankah, with intent, knowing the horse she rode, to watch over but not intrude his presence upon her. He had known for some time that el-Sooltan was out of hand, and had decided to call him after a mile or so more of furious exercise; but, instead, quite suddenly and instinctively, he cried, "A'ti balak!—a'ti balak!" which means, "Be careful—be careful," and pulled the mare to a standstill.

He too had seen the mirage of the peaceful oasis, thrown by the atmosphere from a distance of eighty miles, and with his desert-trained eyes had caught the little movement of the foot; and, connecting the two, he insistently called the stallion, knowing that a drop from the saddle at the almost incredible speed at which Sooltan was going might easily result in twisted ankles or even a broken neck.

"Irja!" he called. "Irja!" Which means, "Come back, come back!" And he called again and again as the stallion dropped from a gallop to a canter, a canter to a trot, then stopped dead; whinnied gently; wheeled sharply and stood stock-still.

"Irja, Sooltan!" came the cry. "Irja Sooltan!" And with the cry came the neighing of the mare.

The stallion lashed out, reared and stood still, ears pricked, silken mane and tail flying in the wind.

Then he answered, until the desert seemed filled with the calling of the noble beasts, as the girl sat with thudding heart and eyes fixed on the distant spot where fretted and fidgeted the mare ridden by the Arab.

Then something within her rebelled at this intrusion upon her privacy, causing her to be suddenly stricken with anger and confusion.

"Take me to the tents, Sooltan!" she cried, turning to look back. "Take—but—why—oh! what an escape—a mirage—a——"

But the rest was lost in the sudden bound of el-Sooltan as he raced in obedience to his master's call.

The man waited until they were within a mile of him; then he wheeled the mare and took her back along her tracks, urging her to her topmost speed. Swiftly she fled and swiftly pursued Sooltan, the man not once turning in his seat.

And as they neared the outskirts of the oasis of Heliopolis Hugh Carden Ali urged the mare so that she gained upon the stallion, and beckoned to his groom, who had run hot-foot from the Obelisk to the edge of the desert with fear in his heart for the beast but not one whit for the girl. And he caught the shouted order as his master passed him at full speed, and ran out, shouting in his turn to the stallion.

El-Sooltan, connecting the sayis with the bucketsful of water he stood so badly in need of, stopped short, nearly unseating Damaris with the suddenness of his decision and then with the hand of the groom upon his heaving flank trotted docilely back to the Obelisk, where Wellington, risking curvature of the spine, turned himself into a canine picture of ecstatic welcome.

"To-morrow at the same hour," said Damaris, feeding the stallion with sugar, "he will know me better."

"Ma sha-Allah!" murmured the servant to himself, praising the courage of this bit of a woman.

"Bikhatirkum," she said gently, as she moved off in the car.

"Ma'a-s-salamah ya sitti," answered the delighted, astounded man as he salaamed almost to the ground before such unexpected graciousness.



CHAPTER XI

"Give me that man that is not passion's slave and I will wear him in my heart's core. . . ."

SHAKESPEARE.

In his blindness and obstinacy and hurt Ben Kelham carried out his intention and went after lion, the report of which, for all he knew, might have been the outcome of some fellah's vision of a tame pussy mixed up with the nocturnal habits of the lion-headed goddess Sekhet, who, so tradition avers, prowls about ruins by the light o' the moon, seeking whom she may devour.

The moon plays havoc with the strongest-minded, out yonder!

Anyway, love-sick, he left Heliopolis, placing the panacea of sport like a poultice upon his hurt.

Shortly after, one day during the noon hours, in the cool shadows of his great palace in Cairo, there came to Hugh Carden Ali an overpowering desire to see the girl he loved amongst her own people.

She was his at dawn in the desert, although miles of sand stretched between them; his in the rush of the wind, the glory of the sky and the thunder of the horses' hoofs; but to whom did she turn at night; in the maze of the dance; the hothouse atmosphere of the hotel; the crush of the winter visitors?

So, giving a twist to the dagger of love in his heart, he tucked the dogs of Billi in beside him and drove as the sun set to Heliopolis, and, guessing that the duchess would have a table near the window, chose one on the opposite side of the dining-room, so that his presence should not be thrust upon the girl or the old woman who had known his mother.

He sat there, indifferent to or oblivious of the interest his presence aroused, unconsciously counting the vertebrae of the lady at the next table, who had evidently forgotten some essential part of her bodice.

He counted the vertebrae in the back of the lady who was dying to turn round, until the duchess and Damaris entered the room; then he clenched his hands under the table with an involuntary shudder of disgust.

It was the first time he had seen the girl he loved in evening dress, and every instinct of the Oriental in him was outraged at the sight of the gleaming neck and shoulders and hint of lace-shrouded virgin form.

She was not in full decolletage by any means, but the waiter's sleeve was but an inch from her satin skin when he bent over her, so that, although he had long grown accustomed in Europe to the undraping of woman o' nights, yet, because he loved the beautiful girl, he longed for the right to walk across the room, pick her up in his arms, and, smothering her in a barku, hide her forever from all male eyes but his own.

Later, as he sat alone in a far corner of the ball-room, he twisted the dagger of love this way and that in his tormented heart, whilst the dogs of Billi worried the life out of the hall-porter as they fretted and moaned for their master who tarried. He had never danced, himself, loathing the idea of the propinquity of a stranger's body so close to his own; of a stranger's mouth so near his own; of the animal odour of the naked body, which no perfume can hide, within his nostrils; just as he loathed the idea of a woman passing from one man's arms to another's throughout the best part of a night.

He had no desire whatever to dance with Damaris, but all the Eastern in him longed to make her dance for him; in the desert for preference; under the light of the moon; with the insistent throbbing of the drum keeping time to the rhythm of the slender feet upon the warm sand.

And he sat and dreamed under the palms, taking no heed of the sudden cessation of music, the gathering of the dancers against the walls; the half-suppressed, laughter and moistening of lip with furtive tongue and the unusual feeling of expectancy in the heavy, perfumed air.

But he came back to earth when from some corner of the room there came the faint tapping of a drum.

Three times there fell a single beat, then a gentle roll and a single beat, bringing him to his feet as he recognised the measure, just as the lights were switched off, excepting for one great beam which, striking down from some device in the ceiling, made a silvery pool in the middle of the floor.

"No!" he cried from the shadows, "this must not be. It is not seemly for the eyes of women."

But the answer to this protest came in little jeering laughs and quick remonstrance from those who feared that the whetting of their appetites should be snatched from them, and a sigh of satisfaction went up when, from the shadows, there sprang an Arabian youth, beautiful as a god, supple as a snake, quick upon his feet as any fighting stallion.

He stood for a second with arms outflung to the men and women he knew were watching his every movement outside the radius of the light, and then he sprang back with that marvellous leap which is the gift of some Arabian male dancers.

Ah me! you talk in pharisaic whispers of the Nautch girl; in righteous anger against the dainty geisha; in horror of the weaving Salomes as known in Western cities; wait, however, before you pour the last drop from your vials of wrath and indignation until you have seen an Arab dance "al-fajr" which, being translated, means the dawn. You can put what interpretation you like upon it: the dawn of day, or love, anything will do, but you most certainly ought not to watch it.

If, however, you persist in so doing, you should blush to the roots of your hair—you will not, because it will be the perfect poetry of motion you will be witnessing; also ought you, after the third movement, to turn your back or flee the room—you will not, again, because of the mocking sensuality which will keep you rooted where you stand; again, you ought to stuff your ears against the throbbing of the drum—but that will you not do because of the words of love which fall, seemingly reft from the dancer's lips in the rapture of his movements. It is the last word in sensual ecstasy, and should be prohibited for public exhibition to Europeans, yet it is quite impossible to point at any one movement and label it as the cause of the tumult within you.

But Hugh Carden Ali, standing under a palm, turned quickly when a little sound of distress caught his ear, and put out his hand and pulled the girl he had recognised in the dark by her perfume towards him, so that the back of her head rested against his arm; and sensing her nausea at the sight from which she had been trying to fly, and knowing the sheer impossibility of keeping the eyes shut in a theatre, he pulled his handkerchief from his sleeve and placed it across her eyes.

Save for the back of her head resting just below his shoulder he did not touch her, and if he bent his head so that the perfumed riot of her curls swept his cheek, should it count as a grievous sin against him?

The stone beside each of us is quite likely to lie untouched throughout our span of three-score plus ten.

At the last beat of the drum and just before the lights were switched on, Damaris was alone, with a silken handkerchief in her hand, in one corner of which, as she discovered later, was embroidered the Hawk of Old Egypt.



CHAPTER XII

". . . Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays, And one by one back in the Closet lays."

OMAR KHAYYAM.

Hugh Carden Ali, with the dogs of Billi crushed in beside him, raced back to his palace in Cairo and with the shaggy pair at his heels passed to his side of the great house. His body-servant, as nimble as a monkey, as devoted as a dog, and almost dumb by reason of a tongue split in his youth for misdemeanour, fell on his knees at his feet.

He worshipped his young master, who had one time rescued him from a savage, baiting crowd in the bazaar and taking him into his service had made him his own particular servant; he equally loathed his master's austere bedroom and adjoining dressing-room, with simple furniture which had lately come from Bilid el-Ingliz, a dark, cold country across the sea, where it rains without ceasing. And he helped strip his master of the hateful, tight, hot European clothes and trotted joyfully after him to the swimming-bath, and watched him dive in and swim the length and climb out the other end, and disappear between curtains into the luxurious rooms of the East.

Having robed him, agog with curiosity and at a discreet distance, he followed the resplendent figure in his satin raiment, snow-white turban glistening with jewels and hooded falcon on wrist, and cursed the dogs under his breath when they turned and growled softly. But his curiosity was turned to a great amazement when his master passed into the court of the empty, luxuriant, perfumed harem, where once had loved and quarrelled, idled and fought, so many beautiful women.

Under the orders of the Ethiopian eunuch, giant twin of Qatim, in the service of Zulannah the courtesan, the harem was kept swept and garnished, adorned with flowers, aglow at nights with a myriad soft lights hanging from the ceiling in jewelled lamps, to which were flung the fountain's perfumed drops, to fall and break on marble floor and silken cushion, inlaid table and bright-hued birds in jewelled cage.

There does exist a different kind of harem—dirty, gaudy, ill-kempt—somewhat like the inmates—over the whole of which 'tis wise to draw a veil.

The eunuch's bankings-account—which was kept in a certain secret nook of the harem court—had become sadly depleted on account of his master's eccentric views as regarded women, but he still lived in hope, and, delighting in intrigue, as every native does, had welcomed the advent of his ebony brother primed with gossip and suggestion.

Therefore, upon the beating of the gong which had not been struck for many weary moons, he hastened to the court and salaamed to the ground before his master, who sat upon a pile of cushions, guarded by the two shaggy dogs of Billi, with the amber mouthpiece of the jewel-encrusted nargileh between his lips and the falcon upon a padded perch beside him.

"Bring me a woman—to dance," he curtly ordered, and the slave sped to do his bidding, with visions of a big increase in the banking-account hidden in a secret place.

And when the dancer drifted in like a flower-petal upon a breeze, Hugh Carden Ali looked up slowly, letting escape a wisp of smoke from between his lips.

The dancer wore one single garment of transparent black, hung from the shoulders by diamond bands and through which her perfectly nude body shone like an ivory pillar; her slender feet with crimsoned toes and heels were bare; the tiny hands ablaze with jewels; a huge bunch of orange-tinted diamond-sprinkled osprey was fastened in her jet-black hair; across her face there hung a short, almost transparent veil, one corner of which she held between her teeth, leaving to view the wonderful eyes, a heaven or hell of invitation—as you will.

She danced as had danced her Biblical sister to the pleasing of a king for the attainment of her desire; and she danced humming a little tune behind the veil until the movement of her beautiful body and the knowledge of a man's eyes upon her went to her head like wine, so that in the end, by force of habit maybe, she danced to conquer where she had only intended to interest.

As already mentioned, she had the morals of a jackal.

She drifted down the court towards Hugh Carden Ali and, standing before him, bowed her beautiful head to the level of her dimpled knees, laughed gently, and was gone like a bird to a far corner of the court.

She seemed to swing in the air like a lime flower caught on the end of a spider's thread, as she came slowly down once more; to be blown hither and thither like a leaf before the gale as she ran here, sprang there, to the rhythm of the little tune she hummed behind the wisp of veil; to undulate, like a field of ripe wheat beneath the summer sun as she stood quite near the man who watched her with a fraction of the interest he would have shown in the purchase of a dog or falcon in the open mart.

Her henna'd toes pressed firmly on the centre of a Persian rug of such antiquity as to render the pattern indecipherable; she moved her body from the slender waist downward not at all; the muscles of her arms and shoulders rippled, and her head moved, slightly but unceasingly from side to side.

How often one hears of the European's boredom whilst watching the Nautch Dance in which the Indian Nautch girl, fully clothed, indeed in high tight bodice and ankle-length, voluminous skirt, will drive her native audience clean crazy with the tapping of her feet and slight, undulating movements of the slender body and rod-like arms. It is indeed the dullest thing on earth to watch if you are unable to follow and interpret every little movement. But if you can—well! the unexpurgated version of the Arabian Nights will be as milk-and-water compared to the heady brew offered for your consumption. And the old Harrovian sitting cross-legged, upon a heap of cushions, with the smoke of the nargileh, drifting from between his lips, smiled as he picked up the thread of the same old story which had been spun for him when, an arrogant youth of twelve summers, he had ruled his house with no gentle hand.

Otherwise he showed little interest and felt no desire to lift the tantalising veil; neither did he turn his head, else might he have seen the ebony face of the Ethiopian eunuch peering from between a mass of flowers, from which point of vantage he watched the scene with intent to report thereon to his black twin-brother.

At last, and very slowly, and with a growing feeling of resentment in the place where her heart by rights should have been, Zulannah sped down the court upon her toes and fell at the edge of the piled cushions, causing the dogs to growl softly at her daring.

"Thou art a beautiful dancer, woman," said Hugh Carden Ali, making no movement to lift the veil. "Behold, I have passed a pleasant hour and would reward thee. What thou wilt. Money—jewels?—speak."

From behind the wisp of veil which fluttered in the dancer's quick breathing came the barely whispered answer.

"I hear thee not, woman; raise thy voice and be not afraid. I will give thee what thou desirest."

"One hour!"

The man bent forward to catch the words, and when their full import struck him, leapt to his feet and catching the woman's wrist jerked her upright, ripping the veil from before her face.

"Zulannah!" he cried, and sprang back, having heard of the lady's deft handling of her dagger when in the tantrums. Then he caught both wrists and held her pinioned, looking with loathing into the exquisite, furious face, whilst the great dogs, fangs bared, ruffs upstanding, sniffed suspiciously at the knees and waist, even rising on their hind-legs to snuff the slender neck of this woman who had angered their master.

For a second he held her with arms stretched to breaking-point and henna'd toes barely touching the ground, then threw her across the cushions, whilst the dogs growled softly as they prowled, belly to ground, about the prostrate figure and the ebony-hued eunuch tore at his woolly hirsute covering amongst the flowers.

But courtesans have tears as well as other kinds of women, and they use them every whit as effectively, perhaps a bit better, on account of the stoutness of their hearts.

So that when the man ordered the woman to sit up, she sat up, wiped real tears from the innocent-looking eyes, re-arranged her garments, and prepared for battle.

Tough might describe the rose-hued, satin-textured epidermis of the scarlet enchantress.

"Thou hast a great daring, woman."

The courtesan knew not the meaning of the word hesitation, and was off with the still-born desire and on with her original business between the tossing and falling of a drop from the perfumed fountain and ready with an explanation even before the man spoke.

"Thou hast misheard my words, lord. Knowing by hearsay of thy hatred of women, I entered thy house as dancer before thee, to gain as my reward one hour of speech with thee."

"Speech? Wherefore?

"Because I would help thee, and in helping thee help myself." Clasping her slender jewelled hands, across her bosom, she looked up to the gilded ceiling, and sighing softly, whispered:

"I love!"

"Thou!"

"Yea, lord. I love—and—thou lovest—and—nay, hear me, it is for thy advancement—and mine—and he, the man for whom my soul has turned to water, for whom I yearn—yea, if it be but for one single hour of his love—a memory of rose-time in the ash-pit of my years—he———" She stopped.

'Tis wise to approach a wounded tiger warily, especially if you are not certain as to the extent of the hurt or the power of the weapon of defence in your hand.

"Sit—and speak quickly, for I would have thee gone."

The man spoke curtly as he sank upon a pile of cushions and pointed to one on the far side of the Persian rug, upon which the most courted woman in Egypt knelt, with her eyes full of gentleness and her heart pounding in a torment of rage and fear.

"Yea, I understand."

Hugh Carden Ali spoke wearily, being stricken with love. For ten solid minutes the woman had talked round her subject. Intuitive, she scented danger; usually fearless, her whole being was sick with apprehension; desperate, she dug her nails into her flesh and essayed to reach her goal by a roundabout way.

Then she stopped, sighed, and cast down her eyes; then raised them beseechingly when the man spoke.

"Fearing to use force against the—the woman who thou sayest is loved by the man thou lovest—and may the prophet bear witness that thy tale is as full of turnings and twistings as the paths in the bazaar in which thou spinn'st thy web—thou would'st tear her from him by craft. Explain thy seemingly futile words, and hasten thy lying tongue, for behold the hour of dawn approacheth."

And the wrath in the voice was such as to hurl the woman pell-mell over the cliff of discretion down into the depths of her own undoing.

"She, the white woman, walks in the bazaar, yea, even at noon and at sunset. Perchance one evening, lured by the tale of the riches of the house of Zulannah, might not her feet stray within the portals at the setting of the sun. And behold, the key of the great door is within these hands, and—and———"

The man's hands lay quietly on his knees as he leant forward, and the shadow thrown by the flowering plants hid the twin pools of murder in the depths of his eyes.

"And———?" he whispered.

"And———" she whispered back, "would the white man, thinkest thou, take to wife her who had passed a night in the house of the courtesan? Would he not, without waiting for explanation, throw her into the filth of the bazaar, leaving her for the first comer to pick up, and turn himself to———"

She leapt to her feet, screaming, as his fingers closed round her wrist in a grip of steel; mad with fury, she tore her raiment and hair, raving obscenities in the vilest language of the lowest reaches of the bazaar, oblivious of the dogs which reared and fell and reared unceasingly behind her.

"The white woman who trapeses the bazaar unveiled," she screamed. "The white virgin who flung herself into thy arms, in the market-place, thou trafficker in foreign harlots, the———"

Hugh Carden Ali, the son of his father to the inner-most part of his being in the horrible scene, had made one little sign, and the dogs were upon her.

With a sickening scrunch one caught the side of her head in the steel jaws which stretched from the nape of the neck to the corner of the mouth; with a sharp snap the other drove its fangs into the muscle behind the dimpled knee.

They pulled her down and stood stock-still, as these dogs are trained to do; then with crimson saliva dripping from the jaws, crimson lights shining in the eyes, let go their hold and stood looking alternately from master to quarry, with slowly wagging tails.

There was no sign of anger in the man as he sat tranquilly upon the cushions, the amber mouthpiece of the nargileh between his lips; no sound of wrath in the gentle voice which bid the Ethiopian eunuch to remain prostrated upon the floor, until the arrival of the other slaves, who could be heard pelting through the house from every direction in answer to the summons of the gong.

"Idrabuh," he said quietly to four of the terror-stricken domestic staff, pointing to the eunuch. "Upon the soles of the feet so that he walketh not for many a day—if ever." And as the wretch was dragged screaming from the room, he beckoned to four others, and pointed to the body of the woman. "Carry that out and throw it in the street, in such wise that it is not known from whence it came. Touch not the jewels, lest thou sharest thy brother's fate."

With falcon upon wrist and blood-stained dogs at his heels, he passed out of the ill-fated court to his own apartment, and, having bathed and dressed himself, to his body-servant's grief, in hot, European riding-kit, with boots from Peter Yapp, tucked the cleansed dogs of Billi in beside him, and raced his car to the Obelisk which is all that remains upright of the Biblical City of On.

* * * * * *

The Ethiopian slave Qatim gathered up the broken body of the woman from the filth of the gutter and carried her to his hovel and flung her upon the filthy straw under which he hid the jewels he stripped from her.



CHAPTER XIII

"Best springs from strife and dissonant chords beget Divinest harmonies."

SIR LEWIS MORRIS.

As the sky lightened way down in the east and the faithful turned to prayer, the little old lady sat at her window, taking her hour of rest—her hour of understanding—with hands clasped peacefully in her lap, a little smile at the corner of her whimsical mouth and her snow-white hair fluttered by the breeze of dawn.

Bodily, mentally, spiritually, she was resting, having filched this hour in which, before donning the garish trappings of her toilet, to sit in fine cashmere night attire, covered in camel's-hair wrap as soft as satin, with her little crimson bed-room slippers peeping from under the hem and her snow-white hair confined by priceless lace; just as she had thrown aside the thoughts and worries which are the outcome of the turmoil and unrest of civilisation, to sit awhile, quietly, with her eyes upon the dazzling peaks which show so clearly when we push aside the nightmare fog we have wrapped about ourselves.

Not for her own relief did she sit at rest, for in that way rest does not come to us; but to the relieving of others by withdrawing from the lights and noises of this tumultuous planet and so obtaining a better perspective of things as they stand spiritually, and a clearer insight into the message of the only book she considered worth studying and committing to memory.

She was no great thinker, this little old lady, neither did she store up the printed thoughts of others to repeat them aptly upon fitting occasions; she invariably mixed up the philosophers and their works; 'osophies simply bewildered her; ritual left her cold, psychology troubled her but little, save only in its practical application to the lives of those she loved. But she knew the book of life, with its tragedies and comedies, humour and crass stupidity, nettles and balm from the first chapter to the last, and could prescribe you a remedy to cure your mental hurt just as easily as she could undress your screaming baby, find the criminal pin and re-dress it for you; and every member of every Church and every disciple of every creed could have fought a pitched battle at her feet and left her unmoved, so long as the sick and sinning crept to her for help and children, rich or poor, in silks or rags, rushed at her coming to cling about her knees.

She had no fixed time for her hour of understanding. At her window in moonlight, starlight or the coming of the dawn; in her gilded armchair in the firelight or the light of the sun; in her rose-garden, in her parks, anywhere, as long as she was withdrawn from noise and strife.

Not that she did not thoroughly enjoy going out to battle upon the most mundane of material planes. A born fighter, she would plunge into the strife for the sheer love of fighting and would take the bull by the horns or the man by the scruff of his neck and lay about her right heartily with her stout ebony stick backed by verbal blows from her vitriolic tongue.

Well, if we all rested for one hour, even for one minute, out of the twenty-four during the frantic passing of modern days, what a boon we should grant our neighbours!

And as the duchess sat quietly, with Dekko the parrot fast asleep upon the back of her chair, as becomes a well-conducted bird, Fate crept up behind and dropped the black thread of hate and the purple thread of grief amongst the others she had tossed into the old lady's lap.

She suddenly sat upright with a shiver.

Qatim the Ethiopian lifted the body of a woman from out the gutter, and the messenger from the Oasis of Khargegh strode through the gateway of the hotel and kicked the somnolent ghafir or watchman, who coughed discreetly behind the sleeping night-porter's back.

And when Hobson, some time later, entered the bedroom with her grace's early cup of tea, which included an egg and fruit, she said nothing of the terrible story which had run like wildfire through the servants' quarters and had turned her cold with horror.

Hobson was an autocrat in her own domain and ruled with a cast-iron rod.

"Don't you utter one word of this disgusting tale to her grace," she had said fiercely as she had sailed through the door of the ladies-maids' room, held meekly open for her by one of the under-maids, who had been caught gossiping, "or back you go to England, both of you." She turned back into the room and rattled the tray to emphasise her orders. "I won't have my lady troubled with it, d'you hear? Common circus trash! what has it got to do with you, I should like to know, if she's been killed or not? That's what they all come to, as you'll find out, if you don't take care."

She had swept from the room leaving the plump, rosy-cheeked Devonshire lasses trembling.

Many, many years ago the duchess had taken the bright, intelligent daughter of a Devonshire farmer on the estate into her service; trained her and promoted her as her seniors in the lady's service had married or been pensioned off, until she had finally risen to the post of head maid and confidential companion.

Love and marriage had passed Maria Hobson by, but she adored her mistress and constituted herself as dragon, sheep-dog and buffer, so as to save her from unpleasantness or pain; at the same time issuing orders as to health and hours which her grace usually meekly obeyed—though you would not have taken a bet upon it with any feeling of security.

It is curious, the ascendancy which such a type of maid can obtain over a strong-willed mistress. Think of Abigail Hill and the influence she had over Queen Anne, which finally ousted the great Sarah Jennings, Duchess of Marlborough, brought disturbance into English politics and ruin to the fortune of the Jacobites.

But at times there was a look in her mistress' eyes and a certain atmosphere radiating from the frail little person before which Hobson quailed, so that she said quite gently, "Tea and one letter, your grace," when she found her sitting at the open window, looking out at the morning sky.

But although she spoke gently and tucked an extra shawl about the bent shoulders with a tender hand, she was thinking viciously all the same over her mistresses leniency towards her god-daughter.

"I wish the young lady could be safely married to that proper English gentleman. One can see he wants her, but she doesn't seem to know her own mind. Too pleased by half she is, to my thinking, with this country and the silly nonsense of their nasty, heathen ways!"

And she left the room with a swish of starched petticoat, when Damaris, who had just returned from her desert ride, entered to greet her godmother.

She knelt at the side of the chair and, encircling her in her strong young arms, laid her cheek against the old lady's, and knelt without movement, looking out to the desert, whilst one wrinkled old hand stroked her head and the other turned the pages of the letter.

A piteous letter of appeal from a woman whose love had brought forth the bitterest of bitter fruit.

". . . Is there a way out, Petite Maman?" wrote Jill, the English wife of Hahmed Sheikh el-Umbar. "Will you undertake the long journey and come and see me, for who knows if together we could not find a way to ensure my boy's happiness? I would come to you, only Hugh is near you, and our men in the East tolerate no interference from their women-folk. My messenger will wait for your answer. I am overwhelmed with foreboding for Hugh my first-born. If you can, come to me. JILL."

And as the sun rose the old lady still sat near the window, trying to come to a decision.

Could she turn a deaf ear to the woman she had known as a girl almost twenty-five years ago? Could she, on the other hand, go to her and risk leaving the girl at her side exposed to the indescribable appeal of the East? Should she send her back to England, or take her as far as Luxor and leave her there under the social wing of Lady Thistleton?

"Have you learned any more about the Arab who follows at a distance when you ride in the morning, dear?"

Damaris nodded.

It seemed she had overheard Lady Thistleton talking about him; his palaces in the desert and at Cairo; his stables and falcons.

The girl stopped for a moment, then continued:

"He has an English name and seems to be a millionaire, and something else which I could not catch, but by the sound of the Prickly-Thistleton's voice it seemed to be something awful!"

"This"—the old lady touched the letter in her lap—"this is from his, mother, dear, asking me to go and see her. If I do, I will tell you the whole story when I come back. Don't ask me anything until then, dear."

Silence fell between them as the hotel woke to another sunlit day.

"Something will happen to decide me," mused the old lady as, a little later, she took her mail from Hobson, who moved majestically about the room with bath-salts and towels. "From Ben," she continued, flicking a lightning glance at the face which, went suddenly rosy pink as it rested against her knee. "Written from the Oasis of Kurkur near the First Cataract. He hasn't seen lion yet, but has heard a lot about the one which is causing a panic amongst the dragomen in Luxor. Oh! how nice for him! Do you remember fat Sybil Sidmouth, the crack shot?"

It seemed that jolly Sybil Sidmouth, well known at Bisley and who had brought a thin stepmother devastated with nerves to winter in Luxor, had also fallen a victim to lion gossip, and had wired a bet to Ben Kelham that she would bring in the lion's skin.

"They are meeting at Assouan to discuss plans . . ."

"Yes?" said Damaris indifferently, and added vindictively, "Knocking about in the desert might reduce her a bit," and gave no thought to the moment of that very morning when, under some uncontrollable impulse, she had turned the stallion Sooltan and taken him back at full gallop and to within a few yards of the Arab who, in European riding-kit and boots from Peter Yapp, had raised his right hand as she had thundered past standing in her stirrups.

A woman could keep a poultry-farm till the last trump, and even then never awake to the fact that the same brand of corn is appreciated both by the goose and the gander!

And, sure enough, something happened to decide her grace before the setting of the sun.



CHAPTER XIV

"Oh! for a falconer's voice to lure This tassel gentle back again."

SHAKESPEARE.

Lunch, desultory shopping and tea with friends in Cairo had been the order of the afternoon following the dawn which had found her grace at the window trying to come to a decision about her god-daughter. They were just returning from these festivities and were negotiating the last cross-roads of the Sharia Abbas when a native policeman, waving his arm like a semaphore, stepped into the slowly-moving stream of traffic.

Resulted the usual maelstrom of motors, native vehicles, stray animals and trams, in which tossed the native pedestrian as, agile and vociferous, he slipped in and out of the block, calling loudly upon Allah in his extremity.

"A native wedding, or something," said Damaris, who was driving. "What fun!" then blushed divinely pink.

There was one gorgeous mounted figure in the laughing, happy, tumultuous crowd which came whirling across the road kept clear for it by the police.

Hugh Carden Ali had gone a-hawking in a certain part of the desert near the ancient City of On, where gazelle is sometimes seen and birds are plentiful.

Clad in orange satin a-shine with jewels, with tight-fitting Eastern trousers ending in perfect riding-boots, with diamond osprey glittering in the white turban and falcon, with jesse to match the orange coat, on gauntleted wrist, he rode serenely in the cheering throng.

His falconers with their underlings walked on either side of the roan, which fretted and fidgeted at the slowness of the pace; the dogs of Billi walked sedately and by themselves; grooms of the kennels led greyhounds on the leash; behind them, almost bursting with importance, came a Persian deftly carrying the cadge, which is a kind of padded stand upon which, hooded and fastened by leashes, the favourite birds are carried to and fro.

At the rear was the birds' van, in which are carted the birds which may or may not be required, also spare parts of the paraphernalia upon which depends the success of this sport, the sport, in truth, of kings! In the "days that are past" the favourite sport of our own monarchs, especially in the "spacious days of great Elizabeth."

The bag was good considering the district, the poles on the servants' shoulders bending under the weight of two gazelle and countless birds of all sizes and plumage.

A couple of siyas waving the customary horsehair fly-whisk ran shouting before their master; servants surrounded the cortege, armed with sticks which they rattled with good effect upon the shins of the more venturesome among the spectators as the procession moved slowly, as move all things in the East.

Shouting fiercely, the siyas stopped suddenly in front of her grace's car, arms uplifted, mouths open, then turned in their tracks and sped back to the master who had called them.

The old lady and the girl beside her interchanged never a word as they watched Hugh Carden Ali urge the mare who picked a dainty path through the wondering crowds which opened a way before her. The sun caught the jewels on the man's breast and above his turban and upon the saddle-cloth of the roan mare, and struck fiercely slantwise into the proud, handsome face with the set mouth and the eyes which never once looked in the Englishwomen's direction.

For a full minute he sat immovable, whilst the mare, freed from the fret of the crowd, stood stock-still. In his bearing, in the magnificent picture he made under the flaming skies, there seemed a subtle challenge to the two Englishwomen. All his English nature rose in revolt against the barriers that rose between himself and Damaris, daughter of his mother's race; but, curbing his passion with the self-control he had learned in British fields of sport, he remembered that he belonged primarily to his father's land, whose people had three thousand years before held the keys of civilisation in their powerful hands, whilst the people of his mother's land were just about emerging from the primitiveness of the Stone Age.

"I am the East!" he seemed to cry in his utter immobility.

Then he turned, beckoned, and gave a sharp order to the bewildered policeman, who salaamed almost to the ground.

Hugh Carden Ali bowed, to the saddle, as the great car shot smoothly forward. There was a smile of welcome on the face of the old woman who had loved his mother; a whole world of welcome in the outstretched hand and a little feeling of thankfulness in her heart; that at last she might get to know the man in time, and, with him, go to visit his mother, or, better still, win his confidence, heal his hurt, and so obviate the tedious journey.

But there was to be no drawing together of the man's wound with the silken threads of sympathy.

He sat like a statue, with his left hand raised in salute,[1] until the Englishwomen had passed; then, throwing his falcon, he watched the confused bird's flight in search of the quarry which was not there.

"Cry aloud to Ali the worker of wonders, From Him thou wilt find help from trouble."

He quoted the first two lines from the Ned'i Ali, the formula used in the East when trouble threatens a falcon, and, touching the mare, passed down the Sharia Abbas, whilst the old lady, going in the opposite direction, came to a sudden decision.

[1]In the East the falcon is carried on the right hand.



CHAPTER XV.

"When he is best he is little worse than a man; and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast."

SHAKESPEARE.

Even as the frail little old lady sat quietly looking out at the coming of the dawn, Qatim the Ethiopian sat looking with pride round his transformed hovel in the back reaches of the bazaar. Having gathered Zulannah from the gutter where she had been thrown after the dogs had pulled her down, he carried her to his hovel and, believing her to be dead, flung her body on the heap of filthy straw which served him as couch, and then stole back—in fact, six times he made the journey—to the courtesan's great house. He did not argue with himself, he had no theories and most certainly no moral standards: the woman was dead; there were certain things, beautiful, gaudy, glittering things in her house which his heart had always coveted, which had made his fingers to itch and his mouth to water; brute instinct told him to seize the bones before the other dogs fell upon them; and he obeyed the brutish impulse.

Hundreds of soft silken gowns; cushions of every hue; the great crimson cover from off the divan—all of these he made into a huge bundle which he carried to his den. The gold and jewelled toilet accessories, the silver basin and ewer, just because they glittered, he tied in a pair of emerald green satin curtains; various strange knives and things with prongs, with which on certain occasions the courtesan had conveyed food to her mouth—she used her fingers in private—with a jewel-encrusted nargileh of marvellous workmanship, he rolled up in a bright yellow and green Kidderminster carpet.

On his fifth journey he carried a small Milner safe upon his back, letting it drop gently upon the hovel floor without the slightest acceleration in his breathing. For five minutes he played with the knob, like a huge monkey, then grinned, rubbed his chest and bull-neck with straw, and padded off again down the circuitous streets at a gentle trot.

He looked at the sky and at the closed doors and windows of the packed houses, and grinned again. He could not tell the hour by a clock, but he knew to a second when the first of the seething mass of humans asleep on the beds and floors and stairs of the packed houses would yawn, rub the sleep from their eyes and stumble, shivering, into the street. He had still his greatest treasure to bring, and had no wish to be caught with it on his back; not because of the criminality of his proceedings—that never once entered his thick skull—but because he was scared of having the mirror reft from him. He was almost devoid of brain, but had a certain animal instinct which served him in good stead and which, in this instance, urged him to keep his part in the history of the past evening to himself. He picked up the full-length mirror as though it had been a small picture, and stood for an instant grinning cheerfully, looking round the room in which his mistress had so often kicked and threatened him.

Then he gave a little click at the back of his throat, placed the mirror on the floor and stole across the Persian carpet of an unknown antiquity and value to a painted deal writing desk which had once reposed in a shop window in Westbourne Grove; and which, on account of its little drawers and little cupboards with painted doors, had given intense joy to the woman whose wealth in hard cash in the bank and jewels in the safe was almost incredible. He lifted the slanting lid, moved a bundle of papers fastened by an elastic band, and pulled out a drawer out of which be took a cheque-book.

He had no idea of the real use of the book with the buff cover and pale pink leaves, but he knew that you had only to make certain black marks on one of the pink leaves and take it to the big house in the Sharia Clot Bey with its fierce man standing in front of the door and money would be given in exchange.

On account of his cunning, his stolidity, his mighty muscle and ferocious appearance Qatim had been made bank-messenger in chief to the House of Zulannah, and had often stood at his mistress's side when she had taken the cheque-book from the drawer and made strange black marks on one of the pink leaves. True, he had rolled his eyes and shown his teeth fiercely many a time at the interpreter who had had to be called to explain that, although he had handed a pink leaf through the bars, there was no money forthcoming; but as his mistress had not struck him for returning empty-handed he had resigned himself at last to the strangeness of the proceedings. The book meant money, that was all he knew; so he slipped it into his loin-cloth as had been his rather distressing habit when handed a bundle of notes by the bank-clerk who, with his co-workers, had never tired of gazing at the gigantic creature in white shorts, crimson tunic, huge turban and rattling scimitar.

He gave no thought to the dead body on the filthy straw; that he knew he could carry under his arm and drop into the Nile when the bazaar slept; but he pulled hard at his curly hair as a plan germinated in the sluggish convolutions of his brain.

It was a very vague and a very childlike plan, but too much could not be expected from one who had been conceived, born and bred on the animal plane.

After an hour's pondering it, however, took a fairly definite outline.

When the sun had warmed the cool wind of night he would hide the body under the straw and visit his eunuch twin, who had really been the cause of the disaster. His silence would have to be bought. Of course it would have been better to have broken his neck at once, but it was too late now, so there was no use in worrying! Then he would go terrorise the servants, giving them to understand that he had been left in charge in his mistress's absence; he would remain in charge until he had acquired enough money to buy the coal-black little Venus who worked in the Shoemakers Bazaar; after that he would creep away with her and return to his own village further down the Nile.

And because, perhaps, of the childishness of the plan it succeeded up to a certain point.

He found his eunuch brother, who was the only one besides his master and himself to know that the dancer had been Zulannah, in the grip of such terror and physical pain as to be almost imbecile, though a look of cunning had shone for a moment in his bloodshot eyes when Qatim had inadvertently let drop a hint as to the accumulated riches in his hovel.

Anyway, they came to an understanding which ensured the eunuch's silence at the price of so much good money, paid in instalments.

Qatim had no intention of holding to his side of the agreement, nor his brother to his—as is the way of such breed of Oriental.

Then, just as he was, clad only in loin-cloth and with whip in hand, the gigantic brute strode to the House of Zulannah. Ensued a turbulent hour, at the end of which he remained acknowledged master of the house and inmates until the return of the mistress, whilst those who had mocked him went in search of cool leaves to place upon the bruised portion of their backs and those two whose heads he had cracked together for having resisted him lay quite still.

Returned to the hovel as the sun was sinking, and in high fettle, he donned red tunic, huge turban and rattling scimitar and strutted with all the negro's delight in fine feathers in front of the mirror which rested against the crumbling plaster walls.

And then he suddenly stopped and stared into the glass.

The filthy straw in the corner of the room had moved. His face went grey; great beads of sweat showed upon his chest, his knees shook, then he fell on his face and covered his head with a corner of the green-yellow Kidderminster carpet, when a voice feebly craved for water and a small blood-stained hand weakly pulled at the straw.

Zulannah was not dead.

He lay terror-stricken for some long time, then slowly got to his knees, tore off the fine feathers and flung the scimitar into a far corner; then, naked save for the loin-cloth, sat down with his back to the straw and pulled at his curly oiled hair, a sure sign in him of deep thought.

Then he grinned and, rising, walked across the floor, and, sitting down again, pulled the woman from under the straw.

No! Zulannah was not dead, nor even fatally hurt, but she was horrible to look upon when the Ethiopian had washed her clean by means of a handful of straw dipped in a broken pitcher of water.

The dog's great fangs had driven behind the ear, severing the mastoid nerve so that the mouth was pulled right up the left side of the face; it had also injured the muscle controlling the eyelid, causing it to droop and giving a diabolical leer to the once beautiful doe-like eye; it had also injured the muscle of the neck so that the head was slightly twisted; but, worst of all, the other dog had driven its terrible fangs into the muscle above the knees, injuring it so that she would never walk straight again.

And Qatim sat back on his haunches, and laughed, clapping his enormous hands.

She was not dead, and her hands were not injured, but she was too hideous to show herself unveiled and too twisted to be recognised in the street.

So all that was left to him to do was to cure her injuries—which he did, and quickly, under the advice of an old herbalist in the Silk Market,—and then sit down for the rest of his life whilst she drew strange little marks on those pale pink leaves.



CHAPTER XVI

"My faint spirit was sitting in the light Of thy looks, my love; It panted for thee like the hind at noon For the brooks, my love."

SHELLEY.

For some inexplicable reason, the little old lady's trust in Jill's son was unshakable. Why, she could not have well explained. It might have been because of his ability to hide his hurt or the memory of his words spoken as the fortune-teller on the night of the ball, or perhaps through his self-denial in refraining from using his mother's erstwhile friendship with the old aristocrat, as a key to the door which was locked fast between himself and the girl he loved.

After all, such marriages had taken place, thousands of them, so why should not his with the beautiful girl be added to the list, the outcome thereof proving the proverbial exception to the inevitable disastrous ending of all such unions?

Why did he deny himself?

Just because he loved the girl with the same all-sacrificing love his white mother had given his Arabian father.

If it had been otherwise, with never a second thought he would have lifted the girl, as doubtlessly his ancestors had oft-times lifted women in their gazus or raids, and left the consequences in the hands of that old beldame Fate.

So it had been decided to start the day after the morrow by private and swiftest steam-boat to Luxor, where Damaris, shepherded by Jane Coop and under the social wing of Lady Thistleton, would sojourn at the Winter Palace Hotel until such time as her godmother should see fit to return from her errand of mercy to the House 'an Mahabbha in the Oasis of Khargegh.

Thus, whilst Jane Coop slept placidly and Maria Hobson wrestled under the bed-covering in the last throes of a nightmare in which, as a camel, she packed parcels of sand wrapped in tissue-paper, in trunks which stretched across an endless desert, Damaris drove out to the Obelisk for her last ride on the stallion Sooltan.

She rode out into the shadows, the dawn having barely lifted the hem of night's purple raiment from the edge of the world; out into the desert stretching silver-grey, soundless, half-waking; just stirred by the light touch of the breeze, which, heralding the dawn, sends little spirals of sand dancing away to the east and away to the west and blows out the stars one by one.

And she rode listlessly, knowing that no desert would ever be as this desert, or dawn as this passing of the night, or liberty as this hour of freedom in the wastes of sand.

And then, when perhaps ten, perhaps more or less, miles out, she pulled the stallion sharply and sat forward, staring, whilst her heart thrilled in a most unwarrantable manner beneath her coat.

Upon a hummock of sand, with tattered robes of saffron, purple and of gold about his feet, there sat a youth.

Sideways he sat, with tips of slender feet to ground as though preparatory to flight. One fine brown hand pushed back a misty veil before the face, which shone wanly in the half-light. A strange, dreamy, cruel face, with crimson laughing mouth, hawk-nose, pointed chin, and eyes of grey-blue-green: eyes in which the pupils never close and which under the shadow of the coarse black hair a-grit with sand shone like twin pools of loneliness hidden in the rocks of Time. The other hand, outstretched, palm uppermost, held between the curling beckoning fingers tatters of the veil which, blown by the wind, twined about the slender limbs and outlined the ribbed ridges of the body thin to gauntness.

And even as she looked, the hummock showed empty, whilst, half-turned, upon tips of slender feet, with beckoning hand, he stood a mile off, perchance more, this youth of crimson, laughing mouth and haunting eyes.

One with the silver-grey and purple of the night, one with the gold and crimson of the coming day, he drew her, whilst the breeze laughed over her head and, soughed faintly in her ears, so that she strove to ride him down, only to find that he was not there; and urged the great beast further still and at his greatest speed, to see the figure ever out of reach, with beckoning hand; and little mocking laugh.

And then, with hoofs clattering in the shining bones of some long-dead fugitive who had failed to reach the oasis, the stallion reared and wheeled, and, caring naught for the hand upon the reins and with the bit between his teeth, raced back upon his tracks, leaving the Spirit of the Desert wrapped to the eyes in tattered misty veil.

Take heed!

So matter at what hour of the day you meet him; be it at the hour of noon, when the scorpion basks blissfully in the scorching sun; be it at night, when the white fingers of the moon essay to close your eyes in the sleep that perchance may have no waking; or at dawn, when heart or soul, or whatever it be, is like unto running water in its strength, beware of that gaunt figure with crimson laughing mouth.

Men bewitched as with woman have followed; women bewitched as with man have followed. You will find their bones if you go far enough or dig deep enough; and leave yours to bleach with theirs if you have not strength to resist.

Beasts see it not at all.

So that through a certain unromantic yearning for oats under his loosening girth, the stallion Sooltan raced Damaris back to the sayis and safety.

She had not understood the import of the apparition in the desert any more than she perceived the figure of a man standing amongst the ruins, watching her.

Hugh Carden Ali knew that it was her last ride; the last time she would feed the stallion with sugar; her last day amongst the ruins of the City of On.

The blood of his fathers, even that of the men who had swept the desert for their women, warred with the blood of his mother of a gentler breed; so that, fearing the strength of the one or the weakness of the other, he had sacrificed the last ride to the love in his heart.



CHAPTER XVII

"The hundred-gated Thebes, where twice ten-score in martial state Of valiant men with steeds and cars march through each massy gate."

There was no moon to break the shadows in the Great Hypostyle Hall of the Temple of Amnon; neither was there sound or sign of life, the winter residents and bird-of-passage tourists being duly occupied in the festivities which are the order of the night in hotel life on the Nile.

It is not actually dangerous, nor is it actually wise, to visit the stupendous ruins of Egypt alone at night. The native has far too good an eye to business to lurk behind obelisk or column with intent to spring out and demand the purse of any stray unit of the cosmopolitan hordes which bring such wealth in the winter months to the land of the Pharaohs.

Rather not! Far greater joy for him at full noon is palming off upon your guileless self the spurious scarab at a price 300% above its intrinsic worth.

Incidents of that kind do not occur in the great tourist centres—though worse, far worse happens to the foolhardy or featherheaded in the by-paths and hidden corners of this mysterious land—but if you have the vision, the terrible silence of the Past, the supreme indifference of the great ruins to the passage of Time, the wonderful repose of the mighty blocks of stone piled in the days of the great Pharaohs, are apt to give a thrill to your heart and an impression to your mind which may last a lifetime.

If you have not the vision you need not worry, for you will not want to wander from the hotel lounge after your coffee to traverse these ancient wastes.

Damaris had spent the last fortnight in helping her godmother prepare for her tedious journey.

With the knowledge that she would have a fortnight, perhaps more, in which there would be little else to do than to visit the ruins, she had rushed through the principal objects of interest in the wake of a verbose dragoman, and then given every moment of her time to her beloved godmother, to whom she had said good-bye that very morning.

Restless and irritated by the trivial conversation of girls of her own age and the amorous tendencies of the stronger sex of the same age and also a good bit older, she had spent the afternoon in the hotel grounds, waiting for the evening, when she could slip away by herself; having realised that the best time of all in Thebes of the Hundred Gates is at fall of night, when the shadows cast a seemly cloak over the vulgarity of the modern buildings, and give an air of romance even to the glittering lights of the appalling esplanade, which flaunts its tawdry modernity cheek by jowl with the quay, built by one of the Ptolemies, and in use even to the present day.

When the call of the Muezzin from the Mosque of Abou'l-Haggag came to her an hour before sunset she went in, bathed and dressed, and dined in her own room. Later, she stole out, ordered her car and drove herself along the broad tree-lined road and up the avenue of ram-headed Sphinxes to the first pylon of the great Temple.

There she switched off the lights, hid the starting-handle under the cushions and, tip-toeing, passed through the first pylon and up to the broken kiosk of the Ethiopian Tahraka.

She walked quietly, though assuredly her footsteps would have been deadened by Egypt's sands even if she had walked upon her heels, and stole through the vestibule to the second pylon, occasionally switching on her electric torch for fear of being tripped by fallen stone.

She had not heard of the great catastrophe which had brought the columns hurtling to the ground, due perhaps to the merciless greed of Ptolemy Lathyrus, or earthquake, or the well-known fact that temples, houses or plans built upon sand are bound to crumble; nor did she wot of the precariousness of the walls around her or the shifting propensities of the foundations.

She walked quietly because the spirit of the place was upon her, the spirit which puts a hand upon your mouth so that words shall not disturb the ghosts of the past, and which blinds your eyes so that you look back upon that hour as on a dream.

Yet, as she passed through pylon, vestibule and the Great Court, she stopped and turned, went on, and stopped again to listen.

There was no sound.

Flashing her light upon part of a fallen column, she sat down upon it, with the purple sky studded with stars as roof above her head and the sands of ages as carpet to her feet.

And as she sat, so still, her thoughts turned to the man who had said he loved her and who yet seemed so content to leave her quite alone.

A woman may refuse a man's honest proposal of marriage and have no intention whatever of marrying him, even later on, but that does not mean he need necessarily take her at her word to the extent of retiring altogether from the horizon of her life.

As for the rest, the flowers upon her breakfast-table, her rides at dawn—about that she instinctively kept her thoughts in check. It was like the cut-glass bottle of perfume which you are not allowed to use, on account of your youth; the first few lines of the first novel you filched from your mother's book-stand that afternoon she was out; the first time you put on a real evening dress and wound a fichu about your neck before you opened your bedroom door.

And as she sat there fell a little sound.

Bits of masonry as big as a bowl or as small as a marble are quite likely to fall upon your pate in colossal ruins, but, remembering the vague uneasiness which had caused her to stop and listen, further back, she sat forward and switched on her light.

Against the wall opposite her, entirely robed in black, with a glittering jewel clasping a corner of the great black mantle swinging from the shoulders, there stood a man.

There was no sign of the paralysing terror which swept the girl; her face, which had gone dead-white, was in shadow, her hands under control.

For a moment she sat breathless, then flashed the light full into the face of the man who had stalked her through the temple, then flashed it back to the jewel, then sighed—an unutterable sigh of relief.

The jewel was in the shape of a hawk, the symbol of Ancient Egypt.

Just for a moment they stayed in utter silence, those two who for all we know may have met and parted in this very spot in the days of the XII dynasty, to meet and part and meet again.

Then she tackled the untoward situation in the only possible way.

"Will you, as you promised, if the hour is come, tell me the tale of the Hawk of Egypt?"

She spoke sweetly, softly, switching out the light.

And Hugh Carden Ali crossed the intervening square of sand, which, however, being one-half his heritage, stretched an impregnable barrier between them, and sank to the ground beside her.

The perfume of her raiment was about him, the sound of her breathing in his ears; all the love and worship of his heart was hers. Yet he merely lifted the hem of her cloak to his lips.

The shadows pressed down upon them as he spoke, quietly, his voice echoing strangely in the Temple of the Gods.

"Behold, the Hawk of Egypt looked forth from the shadows of the mountain fastness, and nothing stirred in the earth or upon the face of the waters.

"Wrong had been wrought and the anger of the gods was as clouds loosened from their hands.

"And behold, as the first sun-ray pierced the fury of the storm, the mighty bird spread wide its wings, which were as of ruby and of emerald and of onyx and of gold as they glistened in the sun, and sailed upon the wind of the morning down towards the plains.

"And as he passed, glittering like a jewel in the crown of Osiris, those of his kind, screaming defiance, spread their wings and hastened west and east.