They waited all the day, and no definite word came of the woman's return. They waited until the stars twinkled and they still waited with the terrible patience of the East. Why they waited they could not have told you. They dared not set upon her if she passed in her litter; she wielded too great a power through her beauty and wealth for that; but as the hours passed, they moved softly to and fro, as moves the wretched beast in his cage at feeding-time, whilst a look of cunning allied to cruelty shone in the soft brown eyes.

It only required a spark to start the conflagration.



CHAPTER XXVI

"And the dogs shall eat Jezebel . . . and there shall be none to bury her."

II KINGS.

The station was bathed blood-red in the after-glow of the wonderful sunset, which, being a daily occurrence, is hardly ever noticed by the winter visitors in Cairo; a star or two twinkled in the pale grey hem of the coat of many colours which Day was offering to Night, as the evening breeze lifted the edges of the veils and blew refreshingly around a woman who descended awkwardly from a native cart and limped her way across the station yard. The porter trundling Ben Kelham's luggage caught her by the shoulder and likening her to the cross-eyed offspring of a clumsy she-camel, flung her to one side. Rage incarnate glared from her eyes, bitter vituperation flowed from behind the yashmak, until, noticing that a swashbuckling member of the native police was making his menacing way towards her, she quieted down and limped to where she saw, standing, the station porter of Shepheard's Hotel.

Strange is that power which has led so many a criminal to the gallows by dragging him irresistibly back to the scene of the crime.

It was some such force which had held Zulannah throughout the day. She had nothing further to gain by looking upon the man who had unconsciously been the cause of her ruin; she had done her best to retaliate by blighting the love she had herself tried to gain; but she had been mastered by a morbid desire to look just once more upon Ben Kelham, hoping to be able to trace in his face some sign of his mental hurt.

The suffering of innocent people and animals had always given her intense pleasure. How much greater, therefore, her satisfaction if she could bring, and gloat over, bodily or mental pain to someone who had made her suffer?

She hung about until she saw Ben Kelham arrive, and stood quite close to him, chuckling inwardly at the tale told by the grim set of his mouth.

Zulannah was dirty; her hands were ill-kempt; her fine muslin veils filthy and torn; but there still hung about her the faint odour of the perfume she had always used in the hey-day of her success. The passing of a barrow piled high with luggage disturbed her veils, and as the rush of some excited natives disturbed the air Ben Kelham swung around.

He had suddenly scented the perfume of Zulannah the courtesan.

He looked to right, to left and all about him, eyed with disfavour the dirty woman so close to him, who stood crookedly, with an evil leer to one eye; frowned and walked away to the platform from which the train starts for Luxor. All stations in the East are invariably and most uncomfortably crowded with natives who either stray hopelessly after the manner of lost sheep, or stand stock-still, as hopelessly incapable of movement, or rush pell-mell hither-thither at the sound of clanging bell, or shriek from locomotive; but the station was unduly crowded this evening, owing to the return of hundreds of pilgrims from a visit to a certain shrine in the countryside and an influx of their friends and relations from the bazaar to greet them.

The strong electric lights were blazing, intensifying the vivid colours and modifying the dirt upon what was intended to be the white portions of the natives' picturesque raiment; they shone down also upon the disfigured woman who, with a certain amount of satisfaction in her heart, brought about by the grim look on Ben Kelham's face, was limping towards the exit. She had just reached it when her veil was caught on the rough wicker of a basket containing hens which was being carried on the back of a man whose mean hovel—which yet had been his home—had been razed to the ground to allow of the building of the courtesan's house.

He had stood the best part of the day, with heart full of vengeance, amongst the little knots of people loitering outside the courtesan's gate, and had only been induced to leave the spot to go and claim the poultry waiting for him at the station.

Just as the veil caught in the wicker he moved a little to one side to escape a group of laughing, joyous pilgrims; swung right round to shout them a greeting and in so doing pulled the struggling woman in front of him, tearing off her veil and exposing the right side of her face which, having escaped injury, was still wonderfully beautiful, in spite of the dirt. The basket of hens crashed, to the ground and, bursting, liberated the birds, as, with a yell of "Zulannah!" the man leapt straight at the woman, who dived under a porter's arm and disappeared through the exit.

There was a sudden mad rush to the exit by the inhabitants of the bazaar, who, jamming together in a shouting, yelling pack, gave the woman a few moments' grace.

"Stand on one side, sir. Come back, miss!" ordered the station-master, seizing the arm of an indignant Britisher. "It's no use trying to stop them; they go like this sometimes, quite mad, generally when they've sighted a thief or somebody against whom they have some grudge. Let them pass, sir; let them pass."

The station-yard was packed with vehicles, motors, omnibuses, and scores of rattling, racketing native carts.

Straight into the middle of them fled the woman, terror lending her an incredible speed which agonising physical pain augmented. She dived under horses, she squeezed through vehicles, she twisted and turned, caring naught for the native drivers, who, indifferent to the daily sufferings of their wretched little horses, lashed at her with their whips, with shouts of "Shima-lak!" "U'a-u'a!" "Riglak, riglak!" "U'a-u'a!" and peals of derisive laughter.

Headed by the man who had carried the hens, their eyes blazing, helpless victims of the indescribable blood-lust which sometimes seizes the mob, the inhabitants of the bazaar, with those who, understanding nothing of the cause of the tumult, had joined in merely for the sport, were after the woman like a pack of hounds.

If it had not been for the limp caused by the shortening of one leg, and which became more noticeable the more she ran, she might have escaped in the crowd in the Place Rameses and been alive to-day. But the pack, as they ran, shouted, "A lame dog, a lame dog! Who has seen a lame dog?" and those who had rushed to door or window to watch the fun pointed her out with yells of laughter. She found a few moments' respite when she tripped and fell over the neck of a recumbent camel indistinguishable in the gloom of the side street into which she had turned as she headed for her own house.

She had no distinct plan in her head; she was too exhausted to think; she only knew, as know all wounded animals, that home is the place to get to when stricken unto death. If she had just sat quite still on the kerb, pulled a bit of stuff across her face and pointed way down the street, with peals of laughter, the mob would have swept past her and she would have been safe; but she blindly ran for home. If she had stayed where she had fallen, behind the camel which lurched to its feet as the pack ran by, she would even then have been safe, but she lay, face down in the filth, only long enough to regain her breath, which sounded like a whistle as it shrilled through the twisted mouth. With breath regained she was up and away, with the secret door in the wall—which had been discovered in her absence—as her goal, just as the human hounds, doubling on their tracks, tore into the street, to see the fluttering end of her dress disappear round a corner.

She ran with a twisting, shuffling lope horrible to see; she looked like some wounded animal as, bent double, she paused again for breath, just for one moment, with face to the wall. She ran on; she stumbled and regained her footing; she fell on her crippled knees; then onto her face in the dust, where she remained, breathing like a far-spent horse, with bloodstained foam flecking the corners of her mouth. A great shivering shook her as she listened to the shouting, yelling mob questing this way and that for the lost quarry. She did not pray; poor Zulannah! she knew nothing of a God of Love or Pity to pray to; she lay still, burying her fingers in the sand, clinging desperately to what remained to her of life.

They swept round the corner, those men and women, screaming vengeance on her who lived in luxury whilst they starved; who hung herself with jewels and neglected to pay the trifling debts of the bazaar; who lived in a house built on the site of their demolished homes. They rushed past and over her lying begrimed and foul, one with the dust of the ill-lighted street They drove her face into the dust; they marked her beautiful body with the shape of their feet; but they did not kill her.

She wanted to live.

The pack passed on to the bazaar, carrying with it the definite news of the return of the woman Zulannah; and if you had looked close you would have seen the cunning in the eyes of the man who had carried the hens; if you had listened to his whispered words you would have shivered at the ferocity of his counsel.

In the passing of ten minutes you would, if you had walked that way, have walked through empty streets in the vicinity of the courtesan's house, and there would have been nothing or nobody to whisper to you of the men, women, children, and dogs standing packed in the rooms and passages and courtyards, waiting for a given signal.

The moon looked down on a peaceful scene as Zulannah, wrapped in filthy garments, crept stealthily from shadow to shadow.

Had she been more observant, she would have wondered at the intense stillness of the bazaar, which, no matter at what hour of the night, is full of little sounds; the song of a woman, or her laugh, or her cry; the crack of a whip; the baying of dogs.

If she had looked back she would have seen the stealthy opening of doors, the craning of a furtive head as quickly withdrawn.

She paid no heed.

She was so near, so very near the place in the wall hidden in the shadow of the talik palms and in which was the secret door which opened on the pressing of a certain brick in the third row from the top. And once in the house, with a veil across her face, a whip or dagger in her hand, she would show them who was master, cripple or no cripple, fool that she had been to have submitted to the black Qatim, but thrice fool he, who knew nothing of that other bank in which one-half her fortune and one-half her jewels were kept in safe custody against such a rainy day as this.

She cursed herself for the blundering, feeble way she had set about revenge; she cursed the moon; the agony of her limbs; the stretch which lay between one shadow and another; but she laughed, though no sound issued from the gaping mouth, as she stood in the last patch of shadow which was separated by some few yards of silvery path from the black blot upon the wall which covered the secret door.

They had hunted and harried her, and walked upon her body lying in the dust, but they had lost her and had gone back to their hovels to eat and sleep, and maybe once more cast up the reckoning of the money she owed them, the which—she swore the most horrible oath—she would never pay.

She gathered up her dust-ridden garments and stole swiftly across the moonlit space; she had just touched the edge of the shadow, she was almost home, when, with a mighty shout, they were upon her. Out of the houses, out of the courtyards, down the streets they swarmed, children and women falling, to be jerked to their feet by the men who ran silently, urged on by the fanatic who for years had hugged the idea of some such moment of most horrible revenge.

And then to the sinister sound of the rushing feet there was added the baying of many pariah dogs which, from every conceivable corner and from miles away, raced like a pack of wolves upon the Steppes, to join the hunt.

Blind with terror, shaking in agony, Zulannah fumbled helplessly for the special brick; it lay, she knew, in the third row and had as mark a jutting piece of mortar in the middle.

She passed her hand wildly up and down, too mad with fear to count; every brick, to right, to left, and as far as she could reach above, below, had the jutting piece of mortar; the wall was as high as the heavens; the third row was here, beneath her hand—no! high above her head—no! one, two, yes, here—her fingers touched it—it was gone.

It takes a long time to write or read in inky words, but it was really only a few seconds before the door swung open.

She gave a scream of terrible relief and rushed into the blackness and as she rushed a dog leapt straight at her shoulders.

She screamed again and swung-to the door with all her strength; it shut upon the dog, breaking its back; it remained ajar to her pursuers.

There still was hope. She knew the way; they did not. Could she but get to her bedroom behind the massive doors, could she but reach the telephone, the instrument she had regarded as her finest toy, she would soon have the police running to the rescue. She fled down the narrow passage which led to a jumble of small rooms; she even paused for a moment to listen to the cursing of those who ran behind her, stumbling in the narrow way.

She fled through the farthest door; she was free; there but remained the shallow flight of marble stairs to the suite wherein her bedroom lay.

Then she stopped, and, shrieking, flung out her arms.

To right, to left and upon the flight of stairs, there stood her servants.

The men and the women she had flogged and kicked, thinking to heal their wounds and bruises and dim their memories by throwing gold amongst them on the morrow.

They made no movement, they simply stood and stared.

Her head-veil and mantle had gone; her under-garments were torn to shreds, leaving exposed the slender body which leaned sideways like a tree which had been struck by lightning. Her matted hair fell far below her waist; it made a frame to the horrible face, one side of which was as that of an old, old hag, and the other, grimed with dirt, flecked with foam, was yet as lovely as a jewel.

They shrank back and still further back; they made the sign to scare away the spirit of evil; thinking her possessed of Eblis, the devil, they would not have touched her for a gold piece.

They turned their heads at the sound of rushing footsteps; they motioned her to move on; believing her mad, they gave her a chance, for in the East you dare not turn your hand against the mentally afflicted.

She ran.

And after her came the pack in full cry.

Across great rooms, lit by hanging lamps, scented with brasiers of perfumed wood, she fled, slipping upon chinchilla rug or glaring monstrous hearthrug of Berlin wool, in her desperate haste to quit the house.

Out into the air she must get; under the trees in the garden; under the moon; down the broad paths to the wall at the end.

There was no wall too high for her to climb in her extremity. Her face was grey; her eyes sunk in black: orbits; her nose pinched, with nostrils which blew and flattened like bellows to her laboured breathing.

A hand clutched at her streaming hair and missed it as she sped down the garden; they were upon her heels, dogs jumping at her face as she ran.

She was blind, deaf, almost dead when the great gorilla-shaped arms of Bes closed about her.

She made no sound as she hurtled through the air. Mercifully perhaps was she dead, as she crashed down into the pit at the bottom of which great shapes prowled hungrily.

They did not stay to watch, not one of them.

Shouting and laughing, men and women ran back to the house, which in one hour they had stripped bare.

Just before the dawn a great flame shot skywards, an orange ribbon across the purple robe of dying Night.

* * * * * *

Requiem

"There was an awful row in the Bazaar last night," said Mr. Ephraim Perkins to his spouse facing him across the breakfast table. "They killed a woman and burned her house down."

"Really, dear?" said Mrs. Ephraim Perkins, rasping butter on a piece of toast. "These natives want a firm hand over them. Poor thing! They usually stab each other in the East, don't they?"

"Yes; I think so. But they threw this one into a lions' den."

"Now, that's exaggeration, Ephraim." The knife never stopped its rasping. "They would not be allowed to keep wild beasts in a populated quarter."

"Stranger things happen in the native quarter, Maria," misquoted Mr. Perkins, "than are dreamt of by the Government official."

True words!

If we dared penetrate the labyrinths of the bazaar and stir with foolish finger the dust which lies thick upon immemorial custom, what should we not find?

But having a meed of wisdom in the full measure of our imperial insularity, we do not pry with foolish fingers; guessing, even knowing of the wild beasts in those labyrinths, we draw a glove upon the hand and walk delicately in the opposite direction, with half-closed eyes.

"I repeat, it is an exaggeration," stubbornly replied Mrs. Ephraim Perkins, as she stretched for the marmalade. "And I do hope the fire-engines arrived in time."



CHAPTER XXVII

"A tale-bearer revealeth secrets; but a man of understanding holdeth his peace."

PROVERBS.

It was the night of the full moon.

It was also the night of the cotillon given by a certain princelet of unpronounceable name and great wealth, who hailed from one of those countries in Europe where quasi-royalties abound.

The cotillon-favours were to be of extraordinarily fine quality. Rumour spoke of gold cigarette-cases and other such trifles, for both sexes; the supper was to be a Bacchanalian feast; every invitation had been accepted—ca va sans dire. The hotel was like a disturbed wasps' nest, and the buzzing of the chatterers and the gossips well-nigh deafening.

Damaris had decided to go to the ball; in fact, since her storm of tears on her return from the unlucky visit to Denderah she had taken the broad view of the situation and had decided to give her neighbours no cause for comment and to continue the festive life, as led in the winter season on the Nile, until the return of her godmother; after which she would, as soon as possible, shake the dust of the land of the Pharaohs from off her feet.

In fact, so gay was she, so full of life and high spirits, that she appeared to have forgotten her lover completely, thereby giving the Thistleton family cause to congratulate themselves in the seclusion of their bedrooms.

"I told you so, Mamma," had said Ellen, this night of the full moon, as she had pondered before the mirror upon the effect a headache-bandeau in the shape of a royal asp would have upon a certain retired colonel who seemed inclined to find solace for his long widowhood en secondes noces. "She evidently did not see Mr. Kelham and Sybil on the sand-bank, and I honestly do not think she cares for him a bit."

"No," broke in Berenice, whose hair clung to her head like wet seaweed to a rock; "I am sure she does not. Do you think if Ambrose had—had courted me and then neglected me, that I could have danced and laughed and———"

"Well, I'm thankful," broke in Mamma. "Looking after any girl as beautiful and——-"

"Erratic," supplied Ellen, who had decided on the headache-bandeau.

"—erratic as Damaris, is certainly no———"

"Sinecure," supplied Berenice, who, in the fervour of her affection for her herculean cleric, gave no thought to such trifles as head-dresses, and not much to the rest of her attire.

Giving a final pat to her offsprings' toilettes, Mamma shepherded them downstairs, tapping at Damaris's door as she passed, inviting her to join them in the Winter-Garden, where they were going to sit and look at the dresses, and watch the arrival of the guests from the less select hotels.

Damaris looked radiantly beautiful as she stood for a moment at the window of her godmother's sitting-room, into which she had gone to fetch a fan.

True, her eyes looked over-big in the violet shadows that surrounded them, and her cheek and collar-bones were unduly prominent, but then, however well you hide the fox of uncertainty which tears at the vitals of your common sense and sense of humour, you cannot completely hide the outward signs of the inner agony which tortures you.

"You're a perfect picture, dearie!" said Jane Coop as she tied the ribbons of the simple, heelless, white leather shoes in which the girl always preferred to dance. "Let me look at you just once more."

Like a slender lily Damaris stood under the electric light. The soft white satin seemed to cling like a sheath to the slender, beautiful figure; her arms were bare; the bodice cut low enough to show her gleaming shoulders. She was dazzling, virginal, remote as she stood quite still, looking down at her maid.

Her eyes looked intensely black; her red hair flamed; she wore no jewels save for a massive jewelled brooch in the shape of a hawk which glittered in the bodice just above the waist-belt where, thinking the bodice too low, she had pinned it hastily.

"I don't like that brooch, dearie," said the maid. "It's a waste of money, I think, to buy these heathen things. But there! you and her grace know best. And don't forget your cloak, darling; it's too chilly to sit out in the grounds without one, Egypt or no Egypt. I'll be real glad when we run into Waterloo station, that I shall."

Damaris laughed as she took the satin cloak with broad sable collar, then kissed her Nannie and walked down the corridor to her godmother's sitting-room, followed by the bulldog.

"I don't want to dance, Well-Well; I'd much rather stay up here with you and read."

"Humff!" said the dog, as he followed his beloved onto the small balcony, where he stood as close as he could to her as she leant on the rail, and looked up at the moon and out to the other side of the river, where ruined temple and ruined tomb shone white.

"I'll come up and see you both," she said, looking down into the hideously-beautiful face, with its honest eyes and beaming expression. "But I can't take you down with me, you know. You might hurl yourself into the middle of a fox-trot to find me. I'll bring you up a cake or a chocolate, if you'll stay in here and not go after Jane to worry her with my night-slippers. Good boy; stay here and wait for Missie."

"Take me with you," said Wellington, as plainly as he could with eyes and tail. "Take me with you."

"Can't, old boy. Look"—she reached inside for a book she had been reading, and laid it on the ground. "Keep that for Missie until she comes back."

She smiled down at the great brute as it placed both forefeet upon the volume, but she sighed as she leant for a moment on the rail, then suddenly drew back as she heard her name mentioned by someone who, hankering after a cigarette, had wandered out to the canvas rocking seat directly beneath the balcony.

". . . Well!" said the masculine voice, "I think it's damned hard lines on Miss Hethencourt, that's all; and a man wants a damned good hiding for being a knave as well as a fool."

"Of course it's not gospel-truth," replied the voice of the hotel's biggest-gossip-bar-none, who, on account of her abnormal interest in other people's affairs, had earned the sobriquet of Paulina Pry, "but some people I know who were at Heliopolis and have just come from Assouan told me that Mr. Kelham is engaged to Miss Sidmouth—you know, she is the crack lady-shot—and that they are on their way home now. The engagement, I should think, will be announced shortly."

"Well, all I can say is that I'm infernally sorry that Miss Hethencourt has been made the butt of gossip and scandal through a cad's behaviour, and I think that you and I ought to be shot for discussing her and her very intimate affairs. If———"

Damaris waited to hear no more.

White as chalk, she stumbled back into the room and crouched down upon the floor beside a chair, burying her face in her arms. For five of the longest minutes of her life she knelt, burning with shame, trembling with rage; then she sat hack on her heels.

"Is there nobody to help me in all the wide world? Nobody I can go to?"

And clearly, as though it was in the room, she heard the echo of the words spoken in the Shrine of Anubis, the God of Death: "Allah! how I love you, and if I may not be your master, I can at least serve you. If you are in distress, will you send me a messenger to my Tents of Purple and Gold? . . . My boat from sunset to sunrise waits at the landing-stage . . . the mare Pi-Kay waits from the setting until the rising of the sun at the Gate of To-morrow."

She acted on the impulse of her outraged pride; she gave not one thought to the mad thing she was about to do; she stayed not one instant to question the trustworthiness of the man who had so strangely shadowed her since their meeting in the bazaar; she decided in the flick of an eyelid.

She would go to him; she would tell him everything, and if he were then willing to make her his wife, she would go to his English mother, and from the shelter of her arms proclaim her engagement to the world.

Yes! she would run away.

In a flash she thought of her beloved old godmother and the loving arms always held out to her, and the loving sympathy and counsel which never failed.

But she shook her head.

To silence the scandalmongers her engagement must be made known before that of the man who had treated her so shamefully; who, if only she had known, was racing towards her at that very moment as fast as train could take him.

"Wait for Missie; you shall come to her," she whispered as she knelt and kissed the dog; "you and Janie."

She sprang to her feet.

What about her promise to her old Nannie? Had she not crossed her heart and given her word that she would always let her know where she had gone?

She moved swiftly to the writing-table, took a sheet of paper and hastily wrote a line; then looked round for some place to leave the message.

Wellington whimpered as he stood with his fore-feet on the book.

She ran to him and twisted the folded paper into the steel ring of his collar, hugged him closely, and turned away.

With a lace veil over her head, concealing her face, with the sable-trimmed cloak wrapped close about her, she slipped from the hotel without being recognised, and down to the quay.

Almost uncanny is the intuitive power of the native.

Without hesitation, a boatman stepped forward and salaamed to the ground before her.

"By the sign of the Hawk-headed Harakat."

He repeated the phrase his master had taught him, and which he had repeated over and over again for many days.

And Damaris never once looked back as the boat crossed the blue-green Nile, which, for all she knew, would stretch forever, an impassable barrier, between herself and those she loved.

Acting as in a dream, she could never clearly recall what happened until she stood at the Gate of To-morrow. She had a vague recollection of crossing the great river, and of being helped out of the boat, and of four gigantic Nubians who stood near a litter and salaamed as she approached; she remembered, too, that the litter was lined and hung with satin curtains and piled with satin cushions, and that she had been carried some distance at a gentle trot which had in no wise disturbed her.

Then it had been gently placed upon the ground, and she had been handed out, to find the sayis of the stallion Sooltan standing salaaming before her, with his hand on the bridle of the snow-white mare, Pi-Kay, the glory of Egypt.



CHAPTER XXVIII

"He made the pillars thereof of silver, the bottom thereof of gold, the covering of it of purple, the midst thereof being paved with love . . ."

SONG OF SOLOMON.

Accustomed to the flowing robes of the Arab, it is not as difficult as it might be imagined to break a desert-trained horse to side-saddle; but the mare, Pi-Kay, spoilt and sensitive, behaved like a very demon whilst the sayis exchanged the ma'araka, which is the native pad without stirrups, for the lady's saddle. She was not really bad, not she! She was simply a spoilt beauty and inclined to show off, so that every time her big, beautiful eye caught the sheen of the girl's satin cloak, she backed and reared and plunged, but more out of mischief than wickedness. For many days she had been ridden alternately astride and side by the sayis, who loved her better than his wife and almost as much as his son; ridden from the Tents of Purple and Gold—and not over-willingly did she go—to the Gate of To-morrow at sunset, to be taken back at a tearing gallop to the Tents, without restraining or guiding hand upon the reins, at sunrise.

It was not sunrise now, and she did not like the person in the shimmering satin who had, in some miraculous way, swung to her back and stayed there; but she was headed in the direction of home, and the moonlight was having just as much effect upon her temperament as it has on that of humans.

A moon-struck horse or a moon-struck camel in the desert is a weird picture and it were wise, as they are for the moment absolutely fey, to give them an extremely wide passage.

"Guide her not, lady," shouted the sayis to Damaris, who answered to the movement of the mare like a reed in the wind, but otherwise seemed to take no notice of horse, or man, or moon, or untoward circumstance; he hung on for a moment to the silken mane and stared up into the girl's unseeing eyes; then, with a ringing shout, let go and jumped nimbly to one side.

There was no backing, no rearing, or vagary of any sort now; the mare started on her journey; broke into a canter; broke into a gallop; then, silken mane and tail flying, thundered back at a terrific speed along the path marked out by her own dainty hoofs, and the relentless feet of that hound, Fate.

Damaris turned in the saddle and looked behind, and then to her right and then to her left.

She was alone in the desert.

The sands, stretched like a silver carpet in front of her and like a silver carpet with the black ribbon woven across it by the mare's feet behind; to the east and west the sandy waste seemed to undulate in great fawn and amethyst and grey-blue waves, so tremendous was the beast's pace; the horizon looked as though draped in curtains gossamer-light and opalescent; the heavens stretched, silvery and cold, as merciless as a woman who has ceased to love.

And then, just as on the far horizon there showed a mound which might have been a hillock of sand or a verdant patch, outcome of precious water, or a slowly-moving caravan of heavily-laden camel, the mare Pi-Kay increased her pace. You would not have noticed it, for it would have seemed to you that she was already all out; but you would—as did Damaris—if you knew anything about horses, have felt it, had you been riding her. It was that last grain of the last ounce by which races are won; the supreme effort of the great sporting instinct, which lies in all thoroughbreds, human or animal; and Damaris, thrilled to the innermost part of her being as she sensed rather than felt the quiver which passed through the mare, leant forward and touched the satin neck.

That which distance had given the appearance of a mound grew more and more distinct. It was no mound nor hillock, verdant patch nor slowly-moving caravan of camel.

Three tents showed at last distinctly, and the following is the short explanation of their origin.

As it is not good for the Oriental youth to stay under the same roof as his mother, once he has come to man's estate—which is at any age after eleven in the lands of intense sun—the building of the House 'an Mahabbha near the Oasis of Khargegh had been begun within the first year of the birth of Hugh Carden Ali.

Owing to the entreaties of his English mother, the boy had not been affianced in extreme youth to a little maid of two or three or four summers, upon whom he would not have set eyes until the night of the marriage.

His mother had idolised him and he had worshipped her; he obeyed her, he would willingly have died for her; later, at her request, he even left his country of sunshine and vivid colouring for hers, so cold and bleak; but before that and at the age when other high-caste youths of Arabia settle down in their own house to contemplate seriously the taking of the reins into their own despotic hands, he had absolutely refused to go to the House 'an Mahabbha, built for him as his father's first-born.

Perhaps also it was the English blood in his veins which at that age filled him with the spirit of adventure.

A desire for solitude, a desire for something sterner than the everyday existence of his luxurious life had driven him out into the desert, where, bewitched, as it were of woman, he had followed the Spirit which ever held out her long fine hand with beckoning finger.

A mere boy? Absurd! Ridiculous!

Not at all; for the high-caste boy of twelve in the Orient is oft-times as much developed physically and mentally as the Occidental of over twenty.

He had followed the Spirit where she had beckoned, and, an Arab through the blood of his father, had caught her and crushed the body, slender to gauntness, in his arms; had twined his fingers in the coarse, black hair and pulled it back from the different-coloured eyes; had sought the crimson mouth until his lips had rasped with the kisses a-grit with sand; slept with his hands clutching her tattered robes of saffron, purple and of gold; torn the misty veil from before her face and dreamed with her cool breath, which is the wind of dawn, upon his face.

He loved her and to her had pitched his tents.

He prayed that he might be with her when he died, and, convinced that his prayer would be answered, he had pitched him a funeral tent between those of Purple and of Gold.

Bewitched of the desert, the colour of the tents resembled those in which she decks herself in the passing of a day and a night.

Outwardly they were just ordinary Bedouin tents, the tan and brown of camel-hide; flat-roofed and square, giving a full-grown man room in which to move and stand to his full stature without the fear—as in the peaked affair called bell—of bringing the whole thing down upon his crown. They lifted at each side to allow the desert wind to enter at any hour it listed; or the moon to pierce him with silvery spear; or the stars to blaze like jewels before his eyes, as he waited for sleep on a rug upon the sand.

The one in which he slept was hung inside with satin curtains of deepest purple, with here and there a star of silver, which glittered in the light of the cut-crystal lamp which hung from the cross-pole. The Persian rug upon the floor was grey and old rose and faintest yellow, and glistened like the skin of woman; of the ordinary furnishings of an ordinary bedroom there was no sign—you would have to go much farther afield to find the tent with all the paraphernalia of the toilet. Just as you would have to go still farther and towards the west, to where were pitched the stables, and the quarters of the specially-chosen servants he took with him in his desert wanderings; just enough—and they had their work cut out—to look after the dogs and birds and horses. The camels, upon whom depended the supplies, were right out of sight, and any one of the servants would have preferred death by torture to approaching within a mile of his master's tents until he heard his call.

In the other tent he ate his bread and dates and drank his coffee or received the humblest of his passing brothers; those who, scorched with heat, tortured with thirst or hunger, and blinded with flying sand, yet would not exchange one minute of their own free desert life for an eternity of soft couches and the most succulent effort of a cordon bleu in the cramped surroundings of a crowded city.

It was hung with orange satin; cushions of every hue were flung upon a carpet of violent colours; the lamps of bronze with wicks floating in crimson saucers, hanging from the crosspole, were rarely lit; the satin curtains hid a smaller room behind filled with dates and coffee-beans, sweetmeats, beads and other things which bring joy to the grateful heart of the wandering Arab and his family.

The sand outside was marked and pressed, down with footprints of men and women and little children.

They had not to ask in order to receive.

But no foot but his had ever trod the fine matting of the tent between the other two.

Firmly convinced that his prayer would be granted and that in the desert he would find the answer to the many questions which had occurred to him to ask of life, he had sought for a covering under which he could lie after death until naught but his bones should be left for the wind of chance to play with.

He had all a Mohammedan's belief in the hand of destiny, but the English blood in his veins filled him with horror at the thought of being torn to pieces by vultures after death; his desert blood filled him with an equal horror at the thought of being weighted down by the regulation tomb of bricks and mortar.

And so it came to pass on this night of the full moon, when the girl he loved was racing towards him and Fate was disentangling the threads she had knotted so grievously, that he lay stretched upon the block of wood which stood three feet high in the centre of this tent. He lay face downwards, with chin in hand, looking out through the lifted flap in the direction of Mecca, whilst the moon hung as a silver shield above him, and the desert enfolded him on every side.

Outwardly the tent was as that of any Bedouin; tan and brown, the colour of the camel's hide, of which it was made; square-roofed, with one side only which lifted, the side which was towards Mecca.

Inside it was lined with a copy of the queen's funeral canopy of softest leather; stretched square; to the touch as soft, supple and fine as velvet.[1]

True, this copy had not taken year upon year to make, nor had scores and scores of nimble fingers stitched and stitched for days and months to finish it, as in the days of the XIXth dynasty. The panels in the copy were of one piece of hide stitched finely by machinery, with the emblems painted upon them after the stitching; in the original they are made by the stitching together by hand of thousands and thousands of pieces of gazelle-hide, each of which had been painted either pink or blue or green or in various shades of yellow before the stitching.

Look up with Hugh Carden Ali as he lifts his head to gaze at something far beyond the tent-roof.

You will see a copy of the central square which, divided into two, rested upon the top of the shrine which covered the dead queen who died about one hundred years after the siege of Troy. One side of the panel is sprinkled with yellow and pink rosettes on a pale-blue ground; the other side shows the vulture, the emblem of maternity, holding in its claws the feather of justice; six there are in all.

That is the ceiling.

The tent walls are lined with a copy of the flaps which hung down on each side of the shrine of the funeral-boat of the Egyptian queen who, some thousand years before Christ, crossed the blue-green Nile, followed by other boats filled with her priests and princes, her officers, her mourning women. North and south, the flaps are of chess-board pattern in squares of pink and green; behind one of which was hidden the small room which held naught but a crystal pitcher and crystal basin, filled to the brim with water for the ablutions at the Hour of Nazam, which is the Hour of Prayer.

Near the top the sides show bands of colour, red, yellow, green and blue, almost as bright in the original as on the day the paints were mixed, one thousand years ago. Beneath the bands upon one side you will see the signet-ring of the priest-King Pinotem—whose son Queen Isi em Kheb espoused—; also the royal asps and the scarab, the emblem of life out of death.

Upon the other wall you will see the lotus-flower, which opens at the rising of the sun and closes at its setting; the enigmatic double-headed ducklings and the picture of a gazelle, which is doubtless the representation of the pet which, bound in mummy trappings, was found beside its royal mistress in the tomb. Across the lotus-flowers, like a silver shaft, there hung a light throwing-spear.

A very technical description, taken down in rough notes at the museum, of a specimen of patchwork—even like the patchwork counterpanes of our great-grandmothers—stitched together by dusky slender fingers in the days of the great King Solomon.

And to Hugh Carden Ali as he lay in this tent, looking towards Mecca, there came the sound, from a great distance, as of a horse running at full speed.

[1]This is a description of the funeral-tent of Queen Isi em Kheb, contemporary of the wise Solomon, mother-in-law of the Shishak who besieged Jerusalem and "carried away also the shields of gold which Solomon had made." (II Chron. 12.)

It served as a pall to cover the royal lady upon her last terrestrial journey, when she crossed the Nile in the funeral boat from her palace in Karnak (?) to her burial-chamber in Deir el-Bahari.



CHAPTER XXIX

"La vie est breve: Un peu d'espoir, Un peu de reve Et puis—Bon soir!"

MONTENAEKEN.

A great light shone in his eyes as he rose from the couch of wood upon which his dead body, with feet turned towards Mecca, was to lie.

The light from the lamp of bronze and cut-glass shade of deepest orange tint struck down upon him, throwing shadows from the snow-white turban which outlined the fine face to beneath the eyes, and round about the hawk-nose, and the mouth of which the gentleness was so belied by the dominant jaw; it gave an ivory shade to the snow-white satin of his raiment; it glistened on his only jewel, an amulet carved from an emerald in the shape of a scarab, set in gold and hung from a fine gold chain about his neck.

His beauty was of the East, but it was male; there was no trace of that effeminacy which so jars upon the sensibilities of those who are bred in colder climes and brought up on sterner lines than the luxurious dweller of the East.

He stood listening to the far-distant sound, then threw out his arms.

"By the mercy of Allah, God of Gods, I am found worthy to serve thee, O my beloved! Within the hour, yea! in but a little over the passing of half one hour, before the shadow of my tent shall reach yon rope, I shall have looked upon thee."

He knew!

His heart told him who was coming to him out of the night; his knowledge of the desert enabled him, by the drumming sound of the hoofs upon the sand—a sound which has not its semblance in the world—to know to a second when the mare would stop before the tent.

It was not the Hour of Nazam, the Hour of Prayer before dawn, the dawn which was to see his questions answered, but he turned and, pulling back the velvet-soft leather curtain, entered the small room lighted by a silver lamp hanging just above the crystal basin full to the brim with water.

No! it was not the Hour of Nazam, but filled with the Oriental's mysterious premonition of that which is to befall, he performed the prescribed ablutions of the Hour of Prayer. Three times he washed his nostrils, his mouth and hands and arms to the elbow; the right first, as ordained, then the head and neck, and ears once and feet once.

He stood erect, with his hands above his head, for five full minutes, whilst the drumming of the sands sounded nearer and nearer, then emptied the water in a circle upon the desert sands, refilled the crystal basin with water from a crystal pitcher and passed into the tent and out upon the sands across which, and even as a speck upon the horizon, he saw the mare Pi-Kay racing. And he threw his hands heavenwards with a great cry:

"Allah be praised! Oh, Allah, unto thee I give thanks!"—the prayer of thanksgiving uttered by his own father so many years ago.

It was a sight to watch, that of the snow-white mare Pi-Kay stretched out, flying like the wind, ridden by a slip of a girl with her gleaming cloak streaming like a banner behind her; but the look upon the man's face was still more wonderful to behold as he stood motionless, sharply outlined against the orange light behind him.

The mare slackened not her pace one whit; like a thunderbolt she hurled herself right up to where stood the master she loved with all her great equine heart; then she stopped short, fine fore-legs spread wide; then reared until it seemed she must fall backwards; then crashed down to rear again, until the loved voice bade her stand.

With the strange frozen look in her eyes which gave them the appearance of ice-bound lakes, and which had been there since she had crept from the hotel, Damaris slipped from the saddle into the arms of Hugh Carden Ali, and there she rested, trembling from head to foot with the stress of her ride, whilst the white mare whinnied for some recognition from her master. And he pulled her forelock from about her gentle eyes and pulled her small ears, and stroked the arched neck; then with a sharp word ordered her to her stables, and, turning to lead the girl into the tent in which no foot but his had trod, gave no more thought to the mare Pi-Kay.

She obeyed him, with mighty little zest, yet lingering not one moment, even though her delicate nostrils showed wide their crimson depths, and her satin flanks heaved like bellows through the speed in which she had covered so many miles.

She moved away at a gentle trot, then stopped and looked back along her satin flank towards the tent, in a vain hope of seeing her master just once more; she did not turn completely round,—she obeyed where she loved—she just looked back along her flank; then, doubtless recognising her defeat, gave a little flick of her heels and trotted off again.

She was just midway between the tents and her stables when she stopped dead, with ears pricked forward.

Save for the silvery mane and tail blown by the night-wind she might have been a statue carved out of marble, so still was she.

Then she suddenly backed and reared a foot or two, then backed again; wheeled; started towards the tents; stopped and wheeled again.

She trembled from head to foot, the beautiful terrified creature; great eyes rolling, little feet sending the sand flying as she moved continually on one spot.

There was nothing to see as she stood, looking east; the tents were behind her, her stables in a straight line from them to the west; there was absolutely no sound, none at all until she neighed.

She neighed until the desert rang with the sound, neighed until the horses in the stables some miles away pulled at their halters and lashed out on every side; then she reared and wheeled as she stood straight on her slender hind-legs, then, crashing to the ground, with a convulsive leap was off into the desert.

Neither did she return for many days; nor was she seen until that dawn when her sayis found her in front of the middle tent, snuffing at the closed flap.

* * * * * *

But the flap was not closed this night, as Hugh Carden Ali sat on the couch of wood and looked at the girl who sat beside him.

She stared down at her hands, which pleated and flattened and re-pleated the satin of her skirt, and her face was as white as her neck and her arms, which shone like lilies kissed by the sun, under the light of the orange lamp.

He waited for her to speak, for it was not for him to guide or influence her in any way by spoken word.

He led her to the wooden couch, which had perforce to serve as seat as there was none other in the tent, and took her cloak, passing his hand gently across the sable collar which encircled her throat; and he glimpsed the hurt of her heart down in the depths of her eyes when she looked up at him and put out her hand and stopped him when, murmuring something about coffee, he turned to the entrance.

"I could not drink it, thank you," she whispered. "I—I want———" and stopped and looked down and pleated the satin over her knee and flattened it with her palm.

She was terrified at the desperate step she had taken—and well she might be. She was strung to a great pitch of nervous excitement through the exhilaration of her tearing ride; she was stubbornly determined to prevent the finger of scorn from pointing in her direction; but she was finding a subtle salve to the smart of the wound to her pride in the romantic setting of the wonderful picture made by the man beside her.

In faith, I see no real excuse whatever in exoneration of her mad impulse, unless it be in her education—or, rather, want of it—and in the fact that she was younger than her years.

Educated in the hugger-mugger way in which are educated the girls who will not have to use their knowledge to earn a livelihood; with, it must be confessed, the great and rare—in these days—asset of perfect manners and courtesy towards all mankind, yet had she never been taught the rudiments of self-control and deliberation. She had a heart of gold, truly, but she leapt to conclusions with closed eyes.

With her to think had always been to act. So that, having leapt far out into a morass of incertitude, she sat perplexed, for 'tis no easy matter to say, "Please will you marry me?" to a man, even if you know that he worships the ground your shadow falls upon.

He sat silent, with his eyes upon her hands, waiting for Fate to point out his path.

Little by little, bit by bit, her surroundings began to affect her. The blood came slowly back to her cheeks so that they glowed like the wild rose in the hedgerow; and her eyes began to lose that set stare which hides the perturbed mind, and to soften behind the heavy fringe of lashes, and her hands to cease their nervous plucking at her dress.

She lifted her eyes to the strangely-painted tent side, looked at the silvery spear and tilted her head back until her throat gleamed like an ivory pillar, to look up at the ceiling with the painted vultures—the emblem of maternity.

The man looked up, then looked down upon this woman of his mother's race whom he loved, and longed with all the intense passion of his father's race that he might see his first-born upon her breast.

She was trying to find words, and they came to her when she clasped her hands upon the jewelled brooch in the shape of the Hawk of Egypt.

She looked at him suddenly and a little shiver swept her at the strange beauty of this silent man; and he as suddenly turned his hands palm upwards in an uncontrollable gesture of Eastern prayer to Fate who had so much to give him, or, perhaps, so little!

"You said you—you would help me if—I came to you—in trouble." She tripped and stumbled over the words. "I have come to—to———"

"Ask my help."

The words were as cold as stones dropped in the beggar's hand, but Damaris leant back quickly when she looked into the man's eyes and saw in them the reflection of the fire she had kindled.

"What is the help you need of me? I know nothing of the ways of women, but I do know that it has been the storm which has swept you from your safe harbour out towards a shore upon which are piled the wrecks of many souls."

She twisted the brooch between her fingers.

"My wedding gift," said Hugh Carden Ali softly, then watched the crimson dye the white neck and surge across her face. "You come—to—me—for help." He repeated the words slowly. "Then you, of course, are—are free—ah!" He leant forward and caught her hands. "You have run away—from what? No, do not speak, I can read your answer in your face. You have been hurt." He lifted the little ringless left hand, then pressed it against the other between his own, whilst a great light flamed in his eyes. "You have come to me, and there is but one meaning for me in that you have come to me. Is it———" His voice dropped to the softest whisper as he crushed her hands down upon the wooden couch so that she swayed towards him. "Is it that I may fasten my own wedding gift into the bridal robe of the woman I love and will take to wife—is it?"

Damaris bowed her head so that the curls danced and glistened in the light, as the torrent of his words, in the Egyptian tongue, swept about her like a flood.

"Hast thou come to me in love, thou dove from the nest? Nay, what knowest thou of love? I ask it not of thee—yet—but the seed I shall plant within thee shall grow in the passing of the days and the nights and the months and the years, until it is as a grove of perfumed flowers which shall change to golden fruit ready to the plucking of my hand."

He pressed her little hands back against her breast so that the light fell full upon her face, and held her thus-wise, watching the colour rise and fade.

"Allah!" he whispered. "Allah! God of all, what have I done to deserve such signs of Thy great goodness? Wilt love me?" He laughed gently. "Canst thou look into mine eyes and shake thy golden head which shall be pillowed upon my heart—my wife—the mother of my children? Look at me! Look at me! Ah! thine eyes, which were as the pools of Lebanon at night, are as a sun-kissed sea of love. Thou know'st it not, but love is within thee—for me, thy master."

And was there not truth in what he said? May there not have been love in the heart of the girl?

Not, maybe, the love which stands sweet and sturdy like the stocky hyacinth, to bloom afresh, no matter how often the flowers be struck, or the leaves be bruised, from the humdrum bulb deep in the soil of quiet content. But the God-given, iridescent love of youth for youth, with its passion so swift, so sweet; a love like the rose-bud which hangs half-closed over the door in the dawn; which is wide-flung to the sun at noon; which scatters its petals at dusk.

The rose!

She has filled your days with the memory of her fragrance; her leaves still scent the night from out the sealed crystal vase which is your heart.

But, an' you would attain the priceless boon of peace, see to it that a humdrum bulb be planted in the brown flower-pot which is your home.

And because of this God-given love of youth which was causing her heart to thud and the blood to race through her veins, she did not withdraw her hands when he held and kissed them and pressed his forehead upon them.

"Lotus-flower," he whispered so that she could scarcely hear. "Bud of innocence! ivory tower of womanhood! temple of love! Beloved, beloved, I am at thy feet." And he knelt and kissed the little feet in the heelless little slippers; then, rising, took both her hands and led her to the door; and his eyes were filled with a great sadness, in spite of the joy which sang in his heart as he took her into the shelter of his arms.

"I love thee too well," he said, as he bent and kissed the riotous curls so near his mouth. "Yea I love thee too well to snatch thee even as a hungry dog snatches his food, though, verily, I be more near to starving than any hungry dog. What dost thou know of love, of life, in the strange countries of the East? For thy life will be a desert life, my love, if once thou art my wife. Look up; look around thee." He pointed to the stars, he pointed to the dim horizon of the desert over which at that very moment was padding that hound Fate. "Wilt thou be content with that, and with me and thy children? Wilt thou not yearn for the comforts of thy heated rooms, the company of those who will point the finger of scorn, maybe, at thee as they have pointed it at my mother?"

He spared her not one jot as he made plain to her what might be the result of her marriage. She would not be marrying the pure-bred son of a splendid race, as his mother had done; she would be the wife of a half-caste, the mixed off-spring of two great races; her children would be half-castes, outcast from their rightful heritage of the sons of the East and the West. The women of her race would not own her, the women of his father's race would not permit her children to play with theirs. Wealth, palaces, camels, horses, jewels would be hers; a place for her children in the seat of his fathers, or her fathers, never.

"I should be strong, I should be strong, for in my heart something tells me that I am thinking of my happiness and not thine."

"Your mother," whispered Damaris, so softly that he had to bend, his head lower still, so that when she moved, in the pain of his arms which crushed her, her cheek brushed his. "She is happy—everyone says so."

Happy! Yes, she was happy, his beloved, most honoured mother; at least she had been, until there had come the question of her child's happiness, her half-caste child!

Then he laughed, joyfully, stretched the girl's arms wide, then crushed her hands above her heart.

"Of course! of course!" he cried. "They are at my House 'an Mahabbha, the House of Love, even now, where they have met to see if they, the dears, thy wise old godmother, my beautiful wise mother, can find an answer to this very question."

They were not. Sick with suspense, they had landed on the far side of the Nile, on their race with Time to the Gate of To-morrow.

"We will go to them to-morrow, thou and I. To the Gate of To-morrow, thou with the mare Pi-Kay, I with the stallion Sooltan, who will well-nigh kill thy mare, my woman, in jealousy. Yea!" He bent and whispered in her ear so quietly, so coldly as to cause the girl to tremble. "As I will kill anyone who looks at thee when thou art my wife."

Then he laughed like a boy as he swung her round and held her at arm's-length by both hands. "We will start to-morrow to meet them, when we will lay the question before them. And then—and then—why———?"

Damaris, with all the smart of the wound to her pride revived, had shaken her head.

"I want you—I want you—to———"

Hugh Carden Ali understood by the grace of intuition.

"We will start for Khargegh to-morrow," he continued after a little pause. "And at the same time—if it will please thee, with thy consent—I will send my swiftest runner to Luxor, where he will despatch by cable the news of—oh! my beloved!—of our engagement—Allah! what a word to describe the opening of the gates of Paradise—to all the great cities of my country and of thy country. Have I thy consent?"

Incapable of speech, Damaris nodded; having cast the die, she trembled like a leaf; and at the sight of her, white, with big, frightened eyes staring at him and teeth driven into her lip, he took her in his arms.

"Thou art mine, beloved, mine as thou hast been in all the past, as thou wilt be in all the ages to come. All mine, thy heart, thy soul, thy body. I ask to gather no pebble from the path nor flower from the tree; I will have the jewelled necklace of thy beauty to hang above my heart, and the grove of thy sweetness in which to take my rest. I love thee, and for the agony of the hours passed in the ruined temples I will take my reward. I love thee, love thee, love thee!"

She made no sound when he bent and kissed her hair, but in the glory of the love which is that of youth, which is as a bud at dawn, the full flower at noon and a few petals at dusk, and of which the fragrance stays with you down all the ages, she raised her face so that he kissed her on the mouth.

And he kissed her closed eyes and the pillar of her throat and the whiteness of her shoulders, and her crimson mouth again and yet again, in the wonder of this, his hour of life, granted him by Allah who is God; and then raised his head and stared out across the desert.

From a great distance there came to him the drumming of a horse's hoofs upon the sand.



CHAPTER XXX

"The true, strong, and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small."

SAMUEL JOHNSON.

The two wise women had long since left Khargegh.

By special train, by special boat, by aid of runners, telephone and telegraph, but above all by the magic of the Sheikh el-Umbar's name and his wife's unlimited distribution of gold, Olivia Duchess of Longacres and her maid and Jill el-Umbar and her maid arrived at the hotel on the night of the full moon.

They would have arrived before sunset if it had not been for the mistake made about the special steamer which had kept them waiting at the quay; they would not have arrived until twenty-four hours later if they had made use of the ordinary train and boat.

"Can't we go faster, ma'am? Can't we get there quicker?"

It was Maria Hobson, stolid, solid, dour, big-hearted woman with a streak of Scotch blood in her veins, who worried outwardly. If you had watched her out of the corner of your eye you would have seen her shake her fist at the desert; if you had walked behind her on the quay you would have heard her say, with a world of entreaty in her voice, to some terrified, non-understanding fellah who quaked at the knee: "Can't you get a move on, somehow? You're only a heathen, to be sure, but if you'd heard the tone in the young lady's voice you'd do something instead of sal-aaming."

She said very little to her beloved mistress, but to Jill she poured out her heart, and Jill who with the intuition of a mother's love had connected the dream with her son let her repeat her tale over and over again.

". . . Just as though she was standing on a precipice and frightened of falling over was her voice like, Mum, Miss Jill—may I call you Miss Jill? It's more familiar-like and—homely, and I know you will excuse me, Miss Jill, if I say that I can't get used to you in those clothes, pretty as they are and becoming to you. It seems to me like fancy-dress, you with a veil over your face, if you will excuse me saying so. You are just the same to me and my lady as when you came to stay with her grace; and glad I for one shall be when I see the barouche waiting for her at Victoria, with Whippup and his powdered head on the box. I don't mind that young chauffeur with one leg lost in the war, but I don't like that wicked-looking red vermilion motor-car of her grace's, though the slum-folks do, and you should hear them cheer, Miss Jill, when it goes down Shadwell way."

This conversation took place on the quay whilst her grace was absent, trying to still the unaccountable fear with which her heart had been filled by her maid's dream, by talking to the little brown urchins who swarmed about her the better to view the bird.

"What do you think of them, Dekko old fellow?" She took him on her wrist, at which he spread his tail, rattled his wings, and puffed his ruff, whereupon the children fled, yelling. "Come now, say something nice to the poor little things. You've frightened them. Ask them if the boat is ready."

Dekko gave a sudden piercing screech:

"You damned, dirty lot!" he yelled. "You——"

And some doubted the bird's sojourn on a sailing-vessel in the full-rigged, full-mouthed days of 1840!

Her grace rapped the razor-edged beak sharply and returned to the other two just in time to hear her maid's answer to some question:

"Sergeant O'Rafferty of the Irish Guards, Miss Jill. He demeaned himself by marrying a barmaid, miss."

As already mentioned, love and marriage had passed Maria Hobson by.

Arrived at the hotel, their spirits went up with a bound.

What had come to them out there in the desert town? Had they all been stricken with some dreadful depression? Of course the child was safe in this laughing, dancing, happy throng, and at the sight of her god-mother she would leave her partner and run to her; would throw her arms about her, and hug her in her loving way.

Owing to the crowds of people and the crush of cars, little if any notice had been taken of their arrival; the luggage was coming up later.

"Wait a minute here, Hobson," had said her grace. "Jill, come and see if you can recognise Damaris by the picture you saw of her—the prettiest girl in Egypt!"

They stood at the side door of the ballroom and scanned the laughing couples sitting in rows in the throes of the cotillon. Ellen Thistleton, with the royal asp of ancient Egypt with a slight list to starboard above her heated countenance, stood alone in the middle of the room, with a glass of champagne in one hand.

Before her stood Mr. Lumlough and the colonel for whom the gilded asp was being worn at such a rakish angle.

She stood for quite some seconds in her conspicuous position, as though debating within herself upon the choice. As Mr. Lumlough subsequently remarked to his panting partner, in his customary slang, "She had a nerve!"

Then, with head on one side, she coyly handed the Veuve Clicquot to the thankful young man, and allowed herself to be gathered to the heart of the portly, jubilant colonel, who, loving her, saw the jaunty gilded asp as a nimbus around her head.

Of Damaris there was no sign, and the old lady's heart, through some unaccountable terror, seemed as if it would sink into her small crimson shoes, though outwardly she showed no sign of the fear that gripped her.

"I expect she has gone upstairs, or out into the grounds to give Wellington a run—I don't see him anywhere. Come, Hobson; give me your arm to the lift."

A deep growl welcomed them as the maid opened the sitting-room door and switched on the light as the ladies entered. Wellington lay near the balcony window, head on paws, with the book his mistress had given him between his teeth. He rose slowly, very slowly, eyes red, ruff bristling round the spiked collar, growling menacingly.

"My dear," said the duchess quietly, "just stand still. Damaris has gone away. He is always like this when she has left him. Hobson, go and see if you can find Jane Coop. I hope to goodness you don't."

She walked across the room and passed close to the dog, who turned his head and, growling savagely, watched her as she moved. Then she came back and sat down quite near him, and leaning down arranged the buckle on her shoe, whilst Jill stood perfectly still, filled with admiration for the old woman, who was not acting out of bravado but simply tackling the situation in the only possible way.

Once let a bulldog on guard know that you do not want to take away or touch his carefully-guarded possessions, and that you are not in the least bit afraid of him, and all will be well.

"Come over here, Jill."

Jill, who had removed her veil and satin mantle, crossed the room and sat down on a stool at the elder woman's feet. She took the wrinkled little old hand and patted it; then they sat still and silent, hand in hand, waiting for the maids' return.

What was there for these women to make such a fuss about? Cannot a girl be allowed to sit out perhaps a dance, or a whole cotillon even, without the world coming to an end?

What made them all three fret, and fuss, and fear?

The great love they had one for the other, perhaps, for love has been known to pierce the mental fog we each one of us weave about ourselves and so allow us to help one another, sometimes even at a great distance.

Maria Hobson knocked and opened Jane Coop's door, who rose and came quickly towards her; and as her grace's maid involuntarily glanced round the room, old Nannie peered over her shoulder with the hope of seeing her young mistress in the corridor.

"Isn't she here?"

"My young lady? No; she's dancing." She paused, and put out her hand. "Isn't she dancing? Isn't she?"

Why did Jane Coop fear as the others feared, and why did her bonny face go suddenly white?

Because she, too, was one of the happy, limited throng who know what real love is.

"My mistress would like to speak to you, Miss Coop."

"What's wrong? Maria Hobson, tell me what's wrong."

Hobson allowed the unlicensed use of her Christian name to pass unnoticed; she closed the door behind her and spoke gently, as she took the other woman's hand and shook it, which was her somewhat masculine way of showing sympathy.

"I don't know; none of us know that anything is wrong. As Mike O'Rafferty used to say. 'We may be afther barking in the wrong back-yard,' but I had a dream, Jane Coop. Sit you down whilst I'm telling it you."

They sat on the sofa, hand in hand, strangely like their mistresses as they sat in the sitting-room near the suspicious bulldog.

At the end of the story of the dream, Jane Coop rose.

"Thank you, Miss Hobson. I thought my young mistress was dancing. I was hoping she was forgetting a bit, with the music and young folk. There's one thing, I shall know where she has gone to. My dearie wouldn't break her word. Come along." She opened the door and turned and spoke over her shoulder.

"Drat men!" she said briefly and emphatically.

"Yes, drat 'em!" replied Maria Hobson, even more emphatically, as her memory leapt clear across the gulf of years to the time when she had walked out with a certain Sergeant of the Irish Guards.

Jane Coop dropped a curtsey to the gentry and stood just inside the door, up in arms, ready to fight anyone at the first word of condemnation of her young mistress.

"Come over here, Coop, please, and tell me everything you can about Miss Damaris. I have an idea—mind you, I am not sure—that she has gone out alone, and we must be as quick as we can in finding her, because Egypt is no place for a white girl to be running about in by herself."

Jane Coop took up a corner of the big white apron she insisted upon wearing, and pleated it between her fingers as she told her grace everything with a surprising lucidity.

". . . She came in here to fetch her fan, your grace, and in here somewhere she will have left me a message. I've never known my baby to break her word, and I'll look for it, if I may. She'll have written it on a bit of this block and with this pencil. It's been thrown down in a hurry. Miss Damaris is that tidy, she can put her hand on anything she wants in the dark, which is more than most of the slipshod, take-off-your-dress-and-leave-it-there young ladies of the present day could do."

The anxious maid hid her fear in a never-ending, sotto voce invective against the Pharaohs and their descendants down to the present generation, as they all hunted vainly for the bit of paper; then she stood helplessly in the middle of the room and apostrophised the dog:

"You know where your missie's gone to. Why don't you help us, instead of lying there growling?" She stood scowling at him, then suddenly walked across to where he lay. "I wonder if she put it inside that book," she muttered; then gave a little cry as she caught sight of the paper twisted in the steel ring of the spiked collar. "I've got it!" she cried. "I've got it!"

The duchess, who was quite near her, put her hand on her arm.

"Take care, Coop. The dog is really angry. Let me get it."

"Not you, your grace. No, not ever so, bless you."

Wellington was standing on the book, great tusks gleaming, eyes glaring, a hideous picture of rage; but love casts out fear, even the just fear of a dog who would never let go until you or he were dead, once he got his teeth into any part of yon.

There was no haste about Jane Coop as she knelt beside him. "Missie wants you," she said. "D'you hear?" The rose-leaf ears pricked at the sound of the beloved name, but the whole tremendous body shook with his growling response. "You don't love her, you brute, else you'd have picked up the book and been ready to start at the sound of her name. I'll teach you to be so slow." With a sudden lightning movement she caught hold of the loose skin just under the jaw, firmly, grimly, with her left hand, holding him amazed and for a moment helpless as she pulled the paper out of the ring; then she let go, and pointed to the book, just as the dog was about to spring.

"Missie told you to keep it for her."

The room vibrated with the thunder of his fury as he placed both feet on the book and glared about him.

"I know," said Jill as she read the message over the old woman's shoulder. "She has gone to my son. To his tents in the desert." She spoke quietly and with a certain dignity and authority which checked all questions. "He will take her straight to me. Shall we go back to Khargegh, or shall I go to them, to his tents?" There was no sign of the triumph in the mother-heart at the thought of the happiness which was to come to her first-born; neither had she a single thought for the others.

A mother's love is the most surpassing of all loves; it is the eighth wonder of the world; it is a mystery before which that of the Sphinx shrinks to insignificance; it is the one love which asks for so very little in return for all it gives.

Blessed, sanctified refuge against all harm!

Five minutes of quick discussion; rapid weighing of the pros and cons as to the best way to keep from the ears that which would serve as a whetstone to the tongues of the scandalmongers; a sharp, clear understanding and decision.

The manager of the hotel salaamed deeply in the doorway before the high-born women, and showed no surprise at the tale—which he believed, perhaps—of Miss Hethencourt, who had gone to meet her grace and having undoubtedly mixed up instructions, had either gone up to Kulla to meet her, crossing her on the river, or had crossed to the other side, thinking, as her grace had suggested doing, that the return from Kulla would be made by camel on the far side of the Nile.

Good gracious! no. He had long since given up showing or feeling surprise at anything any of the great white races might elect to do. He had harboured them for several winters in his hotel, you see.

Certainly everything should be ready in the quickest possible time. A hamper and some brandy; the boat; and upon the other side the swiftest camel from the hotel stables for her Excellency the wife of the Sheikh el-Umbar; the swiftest men to carry a litter—ah! two litters, as her grace's maid would join in the search. Not Miss Coop; she was staying behind, of course, to have everything in readiness for Miss Hethencourt, who would doubtless be very tired and a little frightened.

"There is nothing to fear," he added. "Nobody has ever really been lost in Egypt, and as Miss Hethencourt will not want a crowd of friends to meet her on her safe return, not one word shall be said about the little expedition of relief."

He salaamed and retired, leaving the duchess looking after him.

She had her doubts about his belief in one word of the story.

* * * * * *

Wrapped in her ermine cloak and leaning on her ebony stick, Olivia Duchess of Longacres stood near all that is left of the Gate of To-morrow.

Hugh Carden's mother looked down at her from the back of her camel, on which had been fixed the padded seat which is perhaps the most comfortable of all saddles.

Wellington, with the book between his teeth, sat next her, firmly secured by a rope through the steel ring in his spiked collar to the back of the seat.

"Take him, your grace," had urged Jane Coop, whose own heart was nigh to breaking at being left behind. "Take him; he'll find her if we should happen to have made a mistake. Missie calling you, Wellington. Take the book to Missie; she wants it."

And the dog had obediently picked up the book in his teeth and waddled in the wake of the search-party.

Maria Hobson stood close beside her mistress; the indifferent fellaheen stood some little way apart. They, too, have long since become accustomed to the vagaries of the great white races.

"Let me go alone, dear. He is my son!"

The mother had pleaded for the sake of her first-born, and the old woman, understanding, had given way.

"Goodbye, dear. I will wait for you here. Hobson will look after me. Besides, as long as we save her good name, what matters anything else? Thank God for the moon, Jill. You will easily follow the track of the two horses. Give them both my love, and tell them I'm waiting. Au revoir."

She stood and watched the camel slither across the desert at that animal's almost incredible speed; then turned, sat down on the edge of her litter, took out her bejewelled Louis XV snuff-box, rasped a match on the sole of her crimson shoe, and lit a Three Castles with her eyes on the track left by the hoofs of two horses.

Yes! Two.

Just an hour before they arrived, Ben Kelham had started from the Gate of To-morrow to find his school-mate, Hugh Carden Ali, at his Tents of Purple and of Gold.



CHAPTER XXXI

"Sweet is true love tho' given in vain, in vain; And sweet is death who puts an end to pain."

TENNYSON.

Hugh Carden Ali, quite still and strangely unwelcoming, stood just inside his tent; as Ben Kelham flung himself off his horse; neither did he put out his hand to take the outstretched one of his old school-fellow.

Pretending not to notice the seeming lapse in courtesy, Kelham turned to hitch his horse, only to find that that product of the bazaar had cleared for the horizon.

It were wise when out in the desert, if your horse is not desert-trained, to hang on to the bridle until you have hobbled or hitched your steed, lest peradventure the vultures, at a discreet distance, should assemble about you later, as you lie raving upon the sands, only waiting until your ravings cease altogether, to approach quite near to you.

That the omission was intentional never crossed his mind. He remembered his friend's religion and the strictness with which he adhered to its tenets, and thought that perhaps the shaking of a fellow-creature's hand was forbidden at certain hours.

So that he did not offer his hand again, but his eyes shone with all the affection, which might be termed love, he had had at Harrow for the man who had met him so often as opponent in the cricket-field, and as a friend in his rooms.

He stood quite still for a minute just outside the tent, the moon shining down upon his splendid six-foot-two, and a little shadow of doubt swept across the face of the Eastern as, so strong was the moonlight, he noticed the set of the jaw and the honesty of purpose in the steady grey eyes.

This Englishman might make a mistake, might blunder in the slowness of his deliberate way—there was the faintest suspicion of a smile on Hugh Carden Ali's face as he remembered, even at this critical moment, how, having won the toss, it had taken Ben Kelham so long to decide, at the foot of the Hill, whether to put his side in or not—but that he would deliberately behave like a cad to anything so beautiful and desirable as Damaris, or in fact to any man, woman, child or beast on earth, no! that thought was not to be entertained for one moment.

Come to think of it, what a blessing it is that the cad cannot efface the mark of Nature's branding-iron.

He may be an Adonis, a diplomat, a bon viveur, a good sort, a real sport; he may have a brain and a personality and a gift for choosing and wearing his clothes; his blood may be cerulean, red or merely muddy; but just watch out. One day he will forget to shoot his linen, and you will catch a glimpse of the mark of the beast.

And in the second of time which it took this little analysis of his friend to flash across his mind the hands of Life moved slowly towards the hour.

He put his hand to his turban, then stood on one side.

"Come in, Kelham. Who ever would have thought of seeing you! Jolly decent of you coming all this way out to see me. I thought you were after lion, but I see you have no gun. I'm afraid I can only offer you coffee. No pegs in a Mohammedan's tent, you see."

They each advanced one step and their hands met and gripped across the little dividing-line, on one side of which, one of the two stood under the stars which belong to all men, and the other inside the desert dwelling.

Such a faint line, this one of racial distinction, yet which rises as a barrier higher than the Himalayas, deeper than the ocean, and stronger than steel between the men of the East and the men of the West.

Kelham laughed as he sat down at the end of the wooden couch to which, without making any apology for the bareness of the tent, his host had pointed.

"Jolly seeing you again, Carden. I had an idea you were travelling round the world, and only discovered through the morning paper that you were quite near. The paragraph gave a full description of you and these tents, so I took the first train—I was in Cairo—enquired about you when I arrived at Luxor station, where they seemed to know all about you, hired that horse which has just gone off on a survey into the middle of the desert, got ferried across, and came straight here. I don't mind telling you that lion is rather a sore point with me at present." He laughed again as he took his automatic Colt, which lay cosily in the palm of his big hand, from his pocket and released the safety-catch.

"I'm like darling old Aunt Olivia; she refuses to be parted from hers, once she has sighted Port Said. By Jove, Carden, you've absolutely got to meet her, if you haven't met her already. She knew your mother well. But of course you stayed at the Castle—no! you didn't though; you had measles. Well, you've got to meet——"

He stopped suddenly as the thought of the abominable anonymous letter flashed across his mind; turned a dull red under his tan, and looked round the strange tent, and then at the man who sat on the opposite end of the wooden couch, dressed in all the picturesque simplicity of the East, with the stars and the far-reaching desert as a background.

He sat quite silent, staring at his friend, who yet in some indefinable way seemed such a total stranger.

"By Jove, Carden," he said at last, "I didn't know you had———" He stopped, confused, horrified at the words which had almost escaped him.

"Turned native, Kelham? I haven't. I am an Arab, a Mohammedan by birth. This"—he looked quickly at the leather curtain at the back of his friend—"This is my natural environment. Harrow was a—a loving thought on the part of my honoured mother, and———" He paused, and raising his voice ever so slightly, looked steadily at the curtain which seemed to move, perchance blown by the night wind—"and a great, a terrible mistake. Yes, Kelham, a terrible mistake. Did you ever think of the risk I ran, I, an Arab, of meeting some white woman, whom I might love? Supposing I had met such an one, and had loved her, and had wanted to marry her, tell me, you, all white as you are,—could I have done so?"

He took a simple wooden cigarette-case from his cummerbund and held it out to his friend; they lit their cigarettes and sat smoking in an intolerable silence.

There was no real need to ask the question, because it had been answered even whilst the Englishman had swung himself from the saddle. In a searing flash, by the sound of his friend's voice, the way he moved, the whole Western look of him, Carden Ali had understood that this man, born of the moors, the bracing climate, the cold skies, the snows and springs of England, was the true mate for beautiful English Damaris.

But, to turn the knife in the wound in his heart, he repeated the question, and Kelham, who knew it could be answered only in one way, wrenched at his collar and got to his feet, and crossed to the wall, to finger the throwing-spear with his back to his friend.

"Well, you know, old man, I—well, don't you think it's best—as your father is an Arab—well!—well, you know what—who was it said—something about East and West?—I—don't———" He passed his hand over the wall, then exclaimed, in an effort to change the subject, "By Jove! it's leather! Why, I thought the wall was velvet."

Carden laughed and lit another cigarette as he watched Kelham out of the corner of his eye as he walked slowly round the tent.

Keeping something from each other, they were ill at ease, where, under ordinary circumstances, they would have talked without ceasing upon the good old days at Harrow; of Houses and masters and schoolfellows; of Ducker—the swimming-bath—and Lords and Bill—the roll-call.

They talked, instead, disjointedly upon things which, though they interested them mightily, were not near their hearts as is the Hill to the Harrovian. They had both come to a decision, which, however, left them in nowise comforted.

Ben Kelham decided as he walked about the tent that not a word about the anonymous letter or the courtesan should pass his lips. How could he ever have thought of mentioning the matter, even if it had been only as a safeguard for the future in finding out the best way in which to silence the woman's lying tongue? Besides, if Carden, he thought, had met Damaris or the duchess, he would most surely have said so—which only showed that he knew nothing whatsoever about the Oriental.

Hugh Carden Ali had come to his decision even as he had realised that honour bade him give up the girl whom he had held so close to his heart in his one hour reft from life; on the pretext of want of accommodation, with promise to meet in Cairo or elsewhere as soon as possible, he would send Ben Kelham back upon the track to Luxor, and by a circuitous route would take the girl at dawn to a spot from whence she could ride to Kulla, and get from there by boat to Denderah or back to Luxor.

None save the sayis knew she had come to the tents this night, and he was faithful and as dumb as a dog. Besides—the Oriental had shrugged his shoulders—if he should prove to be otherwise, what easier than to silence him for all eternity?

And if a life barren of love stretched as bleak and limitless as the desert before him, what then? Life was short, and if children of mixed races were to suffer the hell he must suffer through honour, well, surely praise should be offered to Allah in that he would never see his man-child upon the breast of woman.

"Kismet!"

He whispered the Oriental's supreme submission to the inevitable and caught his breath, then lit another cigarette.

Ben Kelham placed his hand upon the chequered curtain, which swung back at his touch.

"Is this where you sleep, Carden? I never thought you had another room behind."

"It is the room in which I make my ablutions prescribed by Mohammed the Prophet of Allah who is God, at the hour of prayer."

The words, which were in truth a prayer for the safe keeping of the woman be loved and had renounced, rang sonorously through the tent, causing Ben Kelham to turn and look at the Oriental, who had risen to his feet as he prayed.

The two fine men stood looking at each other across the tent; then the Englishman moved forward and sat down on the end of the wooden couch as the other moved back and leant against the wall, with his fingers upon the little amulet above his heart.

"Have you ever been in love, Carden?" Kelham asked abruptly, unable to control the question.

"There is no have-been in love. You either love or you do not love. Do you?"

Ben Kelham nodded his head.

"Then, if you do, why, in the name of Allah who is your God as well as mine, are you here? Why are you not at the feet of this woman, stricken with wonder and humility before the gifts the great God has given you? Why do you leave her exposed to the temptations of the East, where has been wrecked the soul of many a white woman? What is the killing of wild beasts compared to the look of the woman's eyes? Where are your eyes, the eyes of your soul? What is this love you speak of which lets you drop the jewel from between your fingers as you would drop the half-consumed cigarette upon the ground?"

It was the prisoner's last despairing cry as the prison-door swings to, shutting out the sun, the song of birds, the voice of children; it was the beggar hungering for a crust, crying against the wasted abundance of the rich man's table.

"What is this love you speak of, this love which lets you pass your days in the shadow of another woman, a woman brown as a burned cake, as comely as a stuffed pillow, who lies in wait to kill the king of beasts? Yes! I know; in the East all things are known. I know whom it is you love, and it is for her that I dare speak as men should not speak of woman. Go to her; tarry not; go and heal the wound to her pride, her heart, her love, lest in her pain she should fly to the first hand for succour."

Ben Kelham sprang to his feet.

"Do you think, if my love was returned, Carden, that I should be here?"

"Love!" The man's voice was not raised one tone, but the tent vibrated with the passionate words. "Are you such a coward that you run away at the first hurt? When the ball struck you in the face at Lords, did you retire—hurt? No; you stuck it, and scored a century! Are you such a dullard that you cannot read beneath a woman's yes and no? Love! Do you know what love means? What would you do for love? Could you forgive in love?"

Kelham stared at the man who, word for word, repeated, the question Damaris had asked on the night he had proposed to her.

"If you heard tongues gossiping out of jealousy of the woman, you loved; if you found her in a situation which could not easily be explained; if she, hurt, wounded, had run like a little child to another to beg for balm for her wound,—tell me, would you forgive her? Tell me!"

There was a strange insistency in the repeated question and a deep anxiety in his eyes, which passed as Kelham laughed.

It was the genuine, honest laugh of the man who loves and is willing to shoulder the burdens, great and small, which love brings in her train.

"You say there is no 'have-been' in love, Carden. I say there is no question of forgiveness in love. You love, and there is no room anywhere for anything else but love."

A great silence fell; the silence of two strong men who for one moment had broken through the barbed-wire of convention, to be their natural selves; the silence heralding the birth of a new day.

There was no sound, as the hands of Fate pointed to the full hour.

It all happened and was over even as the hour struck.

There was a shout from both men as the tawny shape leapt out of the night through the opening of the tent; the crashing report of Ben Kelham's revolver as he fired; the coughing of the wounded lioness as, spitting blood, she recoiled to spring; a ringing shout from Hugh Carden Ali as he flung himself in front of his friend just as he fired, and the great brute, with a mighty roar, turned and disappeared into the night whence she had come.

There was a look of great wonder on the face of Hugh Carden Ali as he stood looking beyond his friend; then he suddenly turned in the direction of Mecca.

Slowly he raised his hand to his turban, whilst a look of ineffable peace swept across his face and stayed, as a little red stain like a crimson rose showed just above his heart.

"Here, Sir!"

The answer to the roll-call rang out across the desert he had loved so well, and was carried by the breeze of dawn up through the stars to the Head Master whose justice and mercy take no account of race.

Then the old Harrovian crashed face downward, dead.



CHAPTER XXXII

"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep."

"Spirits that live throughout Vital in every part. . . ."

MILTON.

The light from the silver lamp shone down upon the water in the crystal basin and upon the girl's red head as she crouched upon her knees against the leather curtain.

Well might she crouch, well might she have put dust upon her head as do the Easterns in their grief and shame; well might her voice have wailed out across the desert in sorrow for the young life broken by the careless fingers of her heedless youth.

But she knelt without movement, with her face in her hands, the hands which had so lightly played pitch-and-toss with a man's heart and a man's life, and prayed desperately, silently, for forgiveness.

Let it be granted her on account of her years, for youth is ever blind, and the young are ever selfish, giving never a thought to the years they must spend, when, grey-haired and wise, they will try to repair with their shaking old hands, the tatters and rents they had made in their thoughtless, grasping youth.

Strange it is that the old in years, in sorrow and knowledge, will sit darning the rents and patching the bad places with their trembling hands, as their wise old heads nod and their dear old mouths murmur a prayer, and yet be unable to teach the young how to keep the fabric of life whole, or safeguard it with the lavender of love and good-will pressed between its folds.

Until the drumming of the sands had sounded like distant thunder and the shape of the horse and its rider had become distinct to the desert-trained eye of her desert lover, Damaris remained apprehensive and silent in the safe refuge of his arms, which crushed her to his heart; then he lifted her and carried her swiftly to the little room of prayer lit by the silver lamp and, wresting a promise from her to keep her presence hidden, no matter what she might hear through the curtain, kissed her hands one and twice and yet again and left her, drawing the curtain close.

Horrified, she heard the voice of Ben Kelham; like a statue of fear she stood, with her ear close to the curtain, for the half of an hour, the thirty short minutes in which she came to understand at last, clearly, definitely, that there was only one man in the world for her, and that was the Englishman who sat with clenched hands under the lash of his friend's words; and her hand trembled so that the curtain shook as though blown by the night-wind as she held it back just wide enough to look through without being seen; and her eyes were soft with gratitude when she understood the greatness of the sacrifice the man of the East had laid on the altar of his honour and his friendship and his love.