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Title: The Hawk of Egypt

Author: Joan Conquest

Release date: April 27, 2005 [eBook #15721]
Most recently updated: December 14, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15721

Credits: Produced by Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAWK OF
EGYPT ***

Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: Trembling from head to foot the girl stood before the tent
which no foot but his had trod.]

[Transcriber's note: the frontispiece page was too badly damaged to
produce a usable image.]

THE HAWK OF EGYPT

By

JOAN CONQUEST

Author of "Desert Love", "Leonie of the Jungle."

FRONTISPIECE BY
G. W. GAGE

NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY

Copyright, 1922,

By The Macaulay Company

Printed in the United States of America

"IN LOVE AND GRATITUDE TO THE
DEAREST OF WOMEN 'MIVES' MY
MOTHER"

THE HAWK OF EGYPT

Author's Note: All names in this book are fictitious.

[Transcriber's note: A number of words in this book are Arabic, using
characters that require Unicode to render properly. Refer to the transcriber's
note at the end of this book for more information.]

THE HAWK OF EGYPT

CHAPTER I

"For in the days we know not of
Did fate begin
Weaving the web of days that wove
Your doom."

SWINBURNE.

". . . allahu akbar—la ilaha—illa 'llah!"

Across the golden glory of the sky floated the insistent call of the
muezzin just as Damaris, followed closely by Wellington, her bulldog,
turned out of the narrow street into the Khan el-Khalili. Shrill and sweet,
from far and near it came, calling the faithful to prayer, impelling merchants
to leave their wares, buyers their purchases, gossips their chatter, and to turn
in the direction of Mecca and offer their praise to Allah, who is God.

As the entire male population of the native quarter knelt, the girl drew
back beneath an awning of many colours which shaded silken goods from
the rays of the sun, whilst curious eyes peeped down upon her from behind
the shelter of the masharabeyeh, the harem lattice of finely-carved wood.
Yards of silk of every hue lay tumbled inside and outside the dukkan or

shop in the silk-market; silken scarves, plain and embroidered, hung from
strings; silk shawls were spread upon Persian carpets; a veritable riot of
colour against the yellow-white plaster of the shop walls, above which
flamed the sky, a cloak of blue, embroidered in rose and gold and amethyst.

The native women behind the shelter of the wood lattice or the yashmak
or the all-enveloping barku, talked softly together as they watched the
beautiful girl who serenely and quite unveiled walked amongst men with an
animal of surpassing hideousness at her heels.

She stood with her head uncovered—it is permissible at sunset—and
with her face lifted, as she listened to the call to prayer, so that a sun-ray
silting in through the silks blazed down upon the positively red curls which
rioted all over her head and were of a tone sharper than henna, yet many
times removed from the shades of red known as carrots or ginger.

Her skin was matte, her mouth crimson, and curved, the teeth perfect,
and her heavily-lashed eyes of so deep a purple as to appear black. She was
slim and supple, unencumbered by anything more confining than a
suspender-belt, a fortnight off her eighteenth birthday and entirely lovable
in looks, ways and temperament in the eyes of all mankind, which includes
women.

The prayer over, and the men again about the business of the hour, she
enquired her way of the vendor of silks who, having quickly replaced his
shoes, had as hastily returned to his shop, his heart rejoicing at the prospect
of perhaps one or two hours' more bargaining—for where is to be found the
Oriental who knows the value of time?

Loving animals, Damaris wanted to find that corner near the silk-market
where can be purchased anything from a camel to a hunting cheetah, a
greyhound to a falcon.

It is not wise for European women to saunter about the old Arabian
quarter unaccompanied, especially if they have been blessed by the gods in
the ways of looks. Damaris Hethencourt most certainly ought not to have
been there, but you must perforce follow the path Fate has marked out for
you, whether it leads through country lanes, or Piccadilly, or the Arab
quarter of Cairo.

The vendor of silks salaamed deeply before her beauty and the
graciousness of her manner, for she smiled when she talked and spoke the
prettiest broken Arabic in the world.

So, putting the huge two-year-old bulldog, which one day was to claim
the proud title of champion, on the leash, she wended her way through the
narrow streets in which two camels may scarce squeeze past each other and
where the masharabeyeh of the harems almost meet overhead.

Water-carriers, camels, sweetmeat-sellers; lowly women in black gown
and yashmak; coffee-sellers; donkeys which continually bray and dogs
which unceasingly bark; cracking of whips; shrill cries of "Dahrik ya sitt or
musyu," ("Thy back, lady, or sir"); shouts of U'a u'a; clashing of bronze
ware; snarls of anger; laughter; song; dust and colour, all the ingredients
which go to the entrancement of the bazaar.

And the odours?

Scent and perfume, aroma and odour; cedars of Lebanon and harem
musk; tang of the sandy sea, fume of the street; the trail of smoke and
onions; the milk of goats; the reek of humanity; the breath of kine. Make a
bundle of that, and tie it with the silken lashes of women's eyes; secure it
with the steel of a needle-pointed knife—and leave it at that.

There is no describing the smell of the East.

The sale of really good animals—the other kind you can buy by lifting a
finger in the streets—takes place twice a month in a small square near the
Suk-en Nahlesin; but as the way to it leads through many dirty and twisting
lanes, few Europeans ever get so far.

The stock is tethered to iron rings in the ground, the vendors squat near
by, but at a safe distance from teeth, claws or hoofs; the purchasers stand
still farther off; there sometimes occurs a free fight, when the length of the
chain that tethers the jaguar next the hunting cheetah is too long by a foot or
so; and the noise is always deafening.

Abdul, falconer of Shammar—which district is to be found on the holy
road to Mecca—being of that locality specialises in the shahin, which is a
species of hawk; visits the market by appointment only, and, being
independent and a specialist, does not always keep that appointment.

Damaris turned suddenly into the market and hurriedly looked round for
shelter, which she found in an arched doorway leading to the usual court of
the native house.

Zulannah the courtesan peered down upon her from between the silken
curtains of her balcony, and clapped her hands twice so that her woman-
slaves ran quickly to watch and whisper about this white woman who stood
unattended in the open market. They giggled in the insufferable Eastern
way, and pointed across the Square, where the whole of the male population
surged about two men. But Zulannah, the recognised beauty of the North of
Egypt, shrugged her dimpled shoulders as she stuffed over-large portions of
sweetmeats between her dazzling teeth and stretched herself upon a divan to
watch the scene over the way.

Abdul, falconer of Shammar, bearded and middle-aged, stood with a
shahin of Jaraza upon his fist and a hooded eyess—which means a young

hawk or nestling taken from the nest—of the same species upon a padded
and spiked perch beside him, whilst hooded or with seeled eyes, upon perch
or bough, were other yellow or dark-eyed birds of prey; short-winged
hawks, a bearded vulture, a hobby, a passage Saker.

But it was not upon Abdul or his stock that the girl's eyes rested, nor,
peradventure, the eyes behind the silken curtains.

The central figure of the glowing picture was that of Hugh Carden Ali,
the eldest and best-beloved son of Hahmed the Sheikh el-Umbar and Jill,
his beautiful, English and one and only wife; the son conceived in a
surpassing love and born upon the desert sands.

"An Englishman," said Damaris softly as she withdrew yet further into
the sheltering doorway and unleashed the dog; and still further back, when
the man suddenly turned and looked across the Square as though in search
of someone. "No! a native," she added, as she noticed the crimson tarbusch.
"And yet . . ."

She was by no means the first to wonder as to the nationality of the man.

In riding-kit, with boots from Peter Yapp, he looked, except for the
headcovering, exactly like an Englishman.

Certainly the shape of the face was slightly more oval than is common to
the sons of a northern race, but nothing really out of the ordinary, just as the
eyes were an ordinary kind of brown, with a disconcerting way of looking
suddenly into your face, sweeping it in an all-comprehensive lightning
glance and looking indifferently away.

The nose was good and quite straight; the hair thick, brown and
controllable; the mouth covering the perfect teeth was deceptive, or maybe

it was the strength of the jaw which belied the gentleness, just as the
slimness of the six-foot of body, trained to a hair from babyhood, gave no
clue to the steel muscles underlying a skin as white as and a good deal
whiter than that of some Europeans.

He moved with the quickness and quietness of those accustomed to the
far horizon as a background; he was slow in speech; and dead-slow in anger
until aroused by opposition.

For the physically weak-born, he had the gentle sympathy of the very
strong; for the physically undeveloped and the morally weak he had no use
whatever—none. In the West, his reserve with men had been labelled
taciturnity or swollen-headeduess, which did not fit the case at all; whilst, in
spite of his perfect manner towards them, his indifference to woman en
masse or in the individual was supreme and sincere.

He was the direct descendant of the founder of Nineveh where horses
were concerned, and his stables in the Oasis of Khargegh would have been
one of the sights of Egypt, had he permitted sightseers.

Educated at Harrow, where he had excelled in sport and captained the
Eleven at Lord's for two succeeding years; respected by the upper Forms
and worshipped by the lower, he had developed the English side of his dual
nationality until masters and schoolfellows had come to look upon him as
one of themselves.

From Harrow he had gone to Brazenose; then had quite suddenly thrown
up the 'Varsity and returned to Egypt.

Love?

Not at all, for was not his indifference to woman supreme and sincere?

Just the inevitable ending of a very commonplace, sordid little story
which had taught the youth one of life's bitterest lessons.

One of a multitude of guests at Hurdley Castle, he had met a woman,
beautiful but predatory, whose looks were taking on an autumnal tint, and
whose banking account had shrivelled under the frost of extravagance.

His utter indifference to her wiles and her beauty had culminated in a
degrading scene of anger on her part, when, forgetting her breeding, her
birth and her nationality, she had first of all twitted him and then openly
laughed at his mixed parentage.

He had stood without uttering a word, white to the lips during her tirade.

"Do you think that any white woman would marry you—a half-caste?"
had cried the woman, whose bills were coming in in shoals.

"Yes, many," he had quietly answered as he bent to pick up her torn,
handkerchief. "Am I not a rich man?"

He had returned to Egypt upon a visit to the Flat Oasis where dwelt his
parents, who, though noting the indescribable hurt in the eyes of their
firstborn, yet asked no question, for in Egypt a youth is his own master and
ofttimes married at the age of fourteen; how much more, therefore, is he a
man at over twenty years?

He had visited his own house in the Oasis of Khargegh, with the purpose
of putting his stables in order and his falconers through a stiff catechism,
and had finally set out to see something of the world.

Not in a desire to cover his hurt, for he was as stoical as any high-bred
Arab; and, Mohammedan from belief as well as early training, did not kick
against what he looked upon as the commands of Allah.

As for women—well! The sweet, docile woman of his father's race
interested him not at all, so that he refused to listen to any hint anent the
desirability of his taking a wife and establishing the succession of the
House 'an Mahabbha, which is the eldest branch of the House el-Umbar;
and racial distinction barred him from the virile, lovely women of his
mother's race.

He had his horses, his hawks, his hunting cheetahs, his dogs; one great
treasure which he prized and one little conceit.

The treasure had been found in the ruins of the Temple Deir-el-Bahari.
An ornament of gold set with precious stones. Its shape was that of the
Hawk, which had stood as the symbol of the North in the glorious days of
Ancient Egypt. The wings were of emeralds tipped with rubies; gold were
the claws and gold the Symbol of Life they held; the body and tail were a
mass of precious stones; and the eye of some jet-black stone, unknown to
the present century.

As an ornament it was of great value; as an antiquity found in the Shrine
of Anubis, the God of Death, its value could not even be guessed at; and
how it had come into the possession of Hugh Garden Ali will never be
known, though of a truth, unlimited wealth works wonders.

And upon his horses' saddle-cloths, his falcons' hoods, his hounds' coats,
and the fine linen and satins of his Eastern raiment he had the emblem
worked in thread or silk or jewels, or painted in soft colours.

It was just a pretty conceit, but in conjunction with one-half of his
lineage and his love for his birds, it had earned him the title of "The Hawk
of Egypt."

And such was the man as he stood in the market-place, having followed
the path which Fate had marked out for him through the twisting lanes of
the bazaar.

CHAPTER II

"Dog, ounce, bear and bull, Wolf, lion, horse."

DU BARTAS.

Damaris should not have been strolling by herself in the native quarter.

If you are drab or flat of chest or soul or face, you can saunter your fill in
any bazaar without adventure befalling you; if, however, nature should have
endowed you with the colouring of a desert sunset, if, in short, you can add
a splash of colour to anything so colourful as a native bazaar, then 'twere
wise to do your sauntering under the wing of a vigilant chaperon, so that the
curiosity and interest resultant on your splash may reach you obliquely and
"as through a glass, darkly."

But there was no one to worry the girl at this hour before sunset, so that
little by little and quite unconsciously she moved forward until she stood
outside the doorway.

She stood, outlined against a background of blazing colours, which
served in no way to dim her beauty. Through the yellow-white arch of the
doorway showed a stretch of turquoise-blue sky across which, upon a
string, swung golden onions and scarlet peppercorns, whilst underneath
ruminated a fine, superbly indifferent dromedary.

For a moment Hugh Carden Ali, jogged by Fate, looked straight across at
the beautiful picture, staying his talk with Abdul, who, with the courtesy of
the East, did not turn his head as he stroked the breast and head of the
shahin on his fist.

But Damaris, with envy rampant in her heart, had no eyes for mere man;
she wanted to walk across and get near the coal-black stallion from Unayza,
a district famous for its breed of large, heavy-built horses. He stood
impatiently, with an occasional plunk of a hoof on the sandy stones, or
nuzzled his master's sleeve, or pulled at it with his teeth, whilst two shaggy
dogs of Billi lay stretched out awaiting the signal to be up and going,
perhaps, in a sprint across the desert after the hosseny or red rascal of a fox
which had been trapped and caged for the sole purpose of hunting.

Ride out with the caged hosseny on a thoroughbred camel or
thoroughbred horse, take with you a couple of greyhounds and a dog or so
from Billi, get right off the tourist track and let the red rascal out, and see if
you don't have some fun before breakfast.

Only get off the tourist track, else you will have all the bazaar camels and
ponies loping along behind you.

The only wild beast this afternoon for sale was a jaguar, black as ink,
smooth as satin, short, heavy, with half-closed green eyes fixed steadfastly
upon a plump white pigeon foolishly strutting just out of reach of the steel-
pointed claws.

"Take her upon thy fist, O Master," said Abdul of Shammar, as he
lengthened the jesses, the short, narrow straps of leather or woven silk or
cotton with which to hold the hawk. "See, she is well reclaimed, being tame
and gentle and altogether amiable. When thrown, she is as a bullet from a
rifle, binding her quarry in high air even as a man holds his woman to his

heart upon the roof-top under the stars. She is full summed"—and he ran his
slender fingers through the new feathers, full and soft after moulting; "she
is keen as the winter wind—behold the worn and blunted nails; she will not
give up, my master, yet will she come to the lure as quickly, as joyfully as a
maid to her lover."

Hugh Carden Ali, the greatest authority after Abdul on the shahin, took
the bird upon his fist, looked at the sunken, piercing eyes which were
partially seeled; ran his hand over the narrow body, short tail and black
back, and a finger over the large beak and deep mouth; held up the ugly
face to the light, examined the flight-feathers and, moving his hand quickly
up and down, caused the bird to flutter its wings—and so give him a chance
of measuring the distance of the wings from the body. Finding her
altogether lovely, he nodded and handed her back to the delighted falconer
of Shammar, just as with a decisive pat the jaguar landed, its huge paw
upon the strutting pigeon, which had forgotten to keep its distance.

For a moment the attention of the spectators, who were mostly squatting
on their heels, was diverted from the master and the falconer. They laughed,
they moved, whilst some in the back row stood up to see the fun, leaving
for one second an open space through which Damaris could see the
fluttering white bird.

"Ah!" she cried, heartbroken at the sight; then, "Fetch!" she commanded
the dog, pointing across the square.

Now, the dog, who had dispensed with his spiked collar on account of the
heat, had no more idea than the man in the moon what he had to fetch for
his beloved mistress; but, restless from prolonged inactivity and the smell
of strange beasts, he hurled himself in the direction pointed; and his speed,
once he got going, was as surprising as that of the elephant or rhinoceros

and other clumsy-looking animals, and in very truth, his appearance was
just as terrifying.

He crashed head-foremost into the back row of spectators, which, as one
man, yelled and fled; tore along the path made clear for him, and sensing an
enemy in the growling jaguar, was at its throat like a thrown spear; missing
it by an inch as the black beast flung itself back to the full length of the steel
chain which fastened it to an iron ring in the ground.

Damaris in her turn rushed, across the square, passing the astounded
spectators, who salaamed as she ran. And as she ran she shouted:

"Let the animal loose," she cried. "Give it a chance; let it loose."

But Hugh Carden Ali, not in the least understanding the sudden
onslaught, but with every sporting instinct uppermost, had already leant
down in the seething, growling mass of fur and hate, and loosened the
chain; whilst, with screams of fear and delight, the crowd raced for the
adjacent houses, from the upper windows of which they could hang in
safety to watch the fight.

Disgusting?

Quite so! But have you ever heard of bull-fighting or pigeon-shooting in
civilised, humane Europe?

There followed a frightful scene, during which Abdul, having picked up
the pigeon, hastily flung his birds far behind the growling, spitting, raging
couple, whilst the stallion, rearing in terror, nearly jerked his master, who
had the bridle slipped over his arm, off his feet.

The two dogs of Billi and the two greyhounds leapt and barked and
snapped at the belligerents until Wellington, taking an off-chance, suddenly

turned and bit one of them clean through the shoulder; whereupon it yelped
and howled and fled, whilst shouts of "Ma sha-Allah" and much clapping
came from the upper windows.

Damaris ran straight towards the man, who, slipping the bridle, put both
arms round her to draw her to safety; then, suddenly realising the beauty,
the youth and the pure whiteness of her, as suddenly let her go.

"Shall I separate them?" he asked simply.

"No! Not even if you could. Once my dog's blood is up, nothing but
death will satisfy him."

She stood quite still, as white as a sheet, with both hands on his arm,
whilst the great dog hurled himself at the spitting brute, only to meet the
teeth and claws which drew blood at every attempt, until the ground was
crimson where they fought.

And then, with tears streaming down her cheeks, Damaris looked up into
the man's face; then buried her face on his shoulder.

And the seed of love which is in the heart of every human burst through,
the clogging mould of custom and convention and, taking root, put forth
shoots and sprang in one moment into the great tree of love of which the
fruits, being those of purity, honour and sacrifice, are golden.

Yet he did not touch her, having learned his lesson; instead, he raised his
right hand above his head.

"Allah!" he said, in praise of that which had come unto him, "Allah, there
is no God but Thee," just as, with a sudden swish, a flock of startled
pigeons flashing like jewels in the setting sun new low down across his
head, bringing an end to the battle.

For one half-second the jaguar's green eyes shifted, and the dog was at its
throat. There was a mighty, convulsive effort of the hind-legs which ripped
the bulldog's sides, a click, a shiver, and the black brute fell dead, as the
dog, a mass of blood, foam and pride, hurled himself onto the skirt of his
beloved mistress, whilst the enraptured spectators, yelling with excitement,
rushed out into the square with shouts of "Ma sha-Allah," which means,
"Well done, well done!"

"Keep quite still," said Hugh Carden Ali, gently, as Damaris made an
effort to turn; then, speaking quickly to the beaming, salaaming spectators,
who had had the time of their lives gambling on the chances of either
animal, ordered them to remove the dead beast and to strew the place with
sand. And "Irja Sooltan," he called to the stallion, which, terrified at the
sounds and sight and smell of battle, had bolted up a side street, where he
stood fretting and fidgeting himself into a fine sweat, until he heard the
clear call which could always bring him back to the man he loved. He stood
for one second, then flung up his heels to the devastation of a stall of
earthenware, and raced back to the square at a most unseemly pace, causing
the spectators once more to fly in all directions with cries of "U'a u'a,"
which means, "Look out, look out!"

He pushed his soft nose with determination against the woman who stood
so close to his master, so that she looked up, and then smiled and stretched
out her arms.

"You beauty!" she cried. "Oh, you beauty!"

"You ride?"

Damaris, thinking of the hack, the only thing with the shape of a horse
she had been able to get so far, and upon the back of which she loathed to
be seen, made a grimace.

"I go out on horseback," she said. "I have not ridden since I left home."

The man's reply, whatever it might have been, was interrupted by Abdul,
who, all smiles, stood before them, with the white pigeon in the left hand
and the shahin upon his right fist.

The native had no intention of causing the white woman pain; in fact,
wishing to find favour in the eyes of the nobles, he only wanted to give
them a chance of witnessing a little of, to him, the finest sport in the world.

"Look, lady!" he cried.

He tossed the pigeon high into the air, allowed her a little distance, then
threw the hawk.

"No! Oh, no! don't!" cried Damaris, as the hawk rose, "stooped" and
missed the pigeon by a hair's-breadth as it "put in", which means that it flew
straight into a small niche of a minaret for cover.

"Ah!" cried Damaris, and "Bi-sma-llah!" ejaculated Abdul, as he threw
the lure of a dead plover and called his hawk with the luring Eastern call.
"Coo-coo," he called; "coo-coo," to which the hawk responded as a well-
trained shahin should.

Hugh Carden Ali stood with his hand on the stallion's mane, looking up
at the sky, in which shone a great star.

"The hawk of Egypt failed," he said to himself. "Flown at a white bird, it
failed. The House of Allah, who is God, gave sanctuary to the little white
bird. Praise be to Allah who is God."

He looked down at the girl, who was kneeling, consoling the dog, who,
reft 'tween pride and pain, showed a lamentable countenance. Suddenly she

looked up and rose, and stood silently.

"Come," he said simply, while he longed to pick her up and ride with her
to his home in the Oasis. "I will take you to your hotel."

"My car is waiting for me in the Sikket el-Gedideh," she replied.

*****

Later, a vision of loveliness, she walked down the dining-room behind
the Duchess of Longacres, whilst continuous lamentations were wafted
through the spring-doors from the spot where sat a dog with sticking-plaster
across his nose and middle girt with a cummerbund of pink boracic lint.

Beside the girl's place lay a huge bunch of crimson roses tied with golden
tassels; there was no card, name nor message.

She asked no question, neither did her godmother.

To what purpose should they? The one knew; the other firmly believed in
allowing the young to work out the salvation of their own souls; which did
not, however, mean that she would not keep a sharp look-out in the future
over the troubled sea of Life.

"I knew something would happen," thought the wise old lady, as she
passed a biscuit up to the parrot on her shoulder.

"Kathir Khairak," it said delightedly.

It merely means "thank you," but had taken weeks of teaching and
repeating to master.

CHAPTER III

"Lor! but women's rum cattle to deal with, the
first man found that to his cost;
And I reckon it's just through a woman, that the
last man on earth'll be lost."

G. R. SIMS.

Damaris was the only daughter of Squire Hethencourt. Her mother was
an
Italian from the Udino, where the hair of the women is genuine
Titian-red and the eyes are blue; which perhaps accounted for her
colouring and some part of her temperament.

Her type of beauty was certainly remarkable—given, it must be
confessed, to a certain amount of fluctuation—and she danced divinely,
which gift must not be counted as a parlour-trick; she was slow in her
movements and quiet in her manner until she talked of horses or anybody
she loved; then her great eyes would flash and her laugh ring out, also she
would gesticulate as her mother had been wont to do, until the climate,
maybe, of a northern country had served to repress the spontaneity of her
Latin mannerisms.

She was simple and unsophisticated and would have made a splendid
little chum, if only one out of every three men who met her had not been
consumed with a desire to annex her for life by means of a gold ring.

"Dads," she exclaimed, two months before the beginning of this story,
having enticed him to her bedroom one night and offered him cream
chocolates as he eat at the foot of her bed, facing her. "Dads, what am I to
do? Guy Danvers says he is coming to see you to-morrow, and I—I am sure
it will only turn out to be—well—you, know."

"But, Golliwog dear, I'm the one to be pitied. This makes the—how many
is it?"

"I don't know, Dads, and it isn't the number; it's the awful habit they've
got into—and I don't understand anything and I don't encourage them, do I?
Do lend me a hankie—this chocolate has burst—and what am I to do?"

"Turn a deaf ear, or a cold shoulder, or put a brave face on, until———"
said Dads, retrieving his handkerchief.

"Until what?"

"Until the right man comes along, darling, as he surely will."

The girl's lids suddenly dropped until the lashes lay like a fringe upon the
white cheek over which very slowly but very surely crept the faintest of
rose-colours.

"Hum!" said Dads to himself, as he made great use of the hankie.

"Do smoke, dearest!"

"No, thank you, pet; I couldn't here."

The man who worshipped his wife and adored his little daughter looked
round the white and somewhat austere room, and ran his eye over the
bookstand at his elbow.

Books on horses, a treatise on bulldogs, the New Testament, essays in
French and in German, the History of Egypt in Arabic, Budge's "Book of
the Dead," and "King Solomon's Mines."

"But what am I do meanwhile, Dads?" and the girl threw out her hands
imploringly.

"Be cold, deaf or brave, Golliwog, as I have suggested."

"But I've been all that, and it's quite useless. Do you think it would help if
I let my hair grow and did it up in a tight knob?"

"I think it would help a lot if you shaved your head entirely, kiddie."
And the man leant forward and ran his hand through the red curls.

Once upon a time Damaris had read the advertisement of a certain
powder guaranteed to darken hair of any colour, and life having been one
long torment owing to her violent colouring, she had, greatly daring,
acquired a packet; had followed the directions by mixing the powder with
water and covering her head with the muddy result, and, "to make assurance
doubly sure," had sat with her clay pate for an hour instead of ten minutes
near a fire; had cracked the clay, washed her head, and found her hair grass-
green.

She had chopped the verdant masses off without a thought, and had ever
after refused to allow it to grow to hairpin length, and to her father only had
granted the privilege of calling her by the pet name of Golliwog.

"Would you like to travel a bit, pet?" And the man smiled, though his
heart was heavy at the thought of the blank which his Golliwog's departure
would leave in the home and the daily round.

"Travel! Travel! Oh! darling—to Egypt?

"Why Egypt? Why not France or—or Italy?"

"Because I've got to go to Egypt sometime or another, Dads. I've got to
see the desert and the mosques and the whites and blues and oranges and
camels. It's in me here," and she thumped her nightgown above her heart. "I
shall never be happy until I have seen them all. Oh! Dads, I wonder if you
can understand; it—it sounds so—so silly———"

"Tell me," and the man moved over to the head of the bed and took his
daughter gently in his arms.

"I'm so out of the picture, somehow, here, dearest," said the child,
striving as best she could to describe what was really only the passing of the
border-line between girl and womanhood. "This terrible colouring of mine,
for one thing. Why, amongst other girls, I am like a Raemaeker stuffed into
a Heath Robinson folio, like a palette daubed with oils hung amongst a lot
of water-colours. I want to find my own nail and hang for one hour by
myself, if it's on a barn-door or the wall of a mosque—as long as I am by
myself."

"Good Lord!" said the man inwardly, as he patted his daughter's arm;
then, aloud. "As it happens, Golliwog darling, I had a letter from Marraine
yesterday, asking me to let you go out to her in Cairo for the winter and see
as much as possible of the ordinary sights. We'll talk it over with Mother to-
morrow."

"Oh, Dads—how wonderful! And can't you and Mother come? And oh!
can I take Wellington?"

"I think so, dear, if he hasn't hydrophobia," and the man bent to pat the
head of the great dog which had crept from under the bed at the sound of
his name.

And later Dads stood at his window, smoking two last pipes, whilst a
glimpse into the future was allowed him.

"Can it be—can it possibly be," he said, puffing clouds of smoke into the
creeper, to the annoyance of many insects, "Big Ben Kelham?—and the
estates run alongside. Wonder if Teresa has noticed anything. And—by
Jove!—of course!—he's at Heliopolis, getting over his hunting accident. I
wonder———"

And Damaris sat at her window, with her arms round the dog, who
longed inordinately for his mat.

"The desert," she whispered. "The pyramids—the bazaar—life—
adventure. How wonderful!" There came a long, long pause, and then she
added, as she turned towards a coloured picture of the Sphinx upon the
wall, "And who cares if the nail is a tin-tack or a screw?"

As it happened, it was destined to be the jewel-hilted, double-edged,
unsheathed dagger of love.

And Fate, having mislaid her glasses, worked her shuttle at hazard in and
out of that picture of intricate pattern called Life, and having tangled and
knotted together the crimson thread of passion, the golden thread of youth
and the honest brown of a deep, undemonstrative love, she left the

disentanglement of the muddle in the hands of Olivia, Duchess of
Longacres.

Her Grace was over eighty.

Of a line of yeomen ancestors ranging back down the centuries to the
William Carew who had fought for Harold, she had been, about sixty-five
years ago, the belle of Devon. Against the warnings of her heart and to the
delight of her friends and family, she had married the Duke of Longacres,
whose roving eye had been arrested by her beauty at a meet of the Devon
and Somerset, and his equally roving heart temporarily captured by the
indifference of her demeanour towards his autocratic self.

She had lost him, to all intents and purposes, two years after the
marriage, but blinding her eyes and stuffing her ears, had held high her
beautiful head and high her honour, filling her empty heart with the love of
her son and the esteem of her legion of real friends; showing the bravest of
beautiful faces to the world, until a happy widowhood had set her free.

Some years of absolute happiness of the simplest kind had followed; the
marriage of her son and birth of her grandson, who had cost his mother her
life. Then the following year had come the Boer War, and the heroic tragedy
of Spion Kop, which left her childless; after that, many years of utter
devotion, to her grandson, who adored her; then the Great War and the
Battle of the Falkland Islands, which left her absolutely bereft, with the care
of the boy's greatest treasure, even the grey parrot, Quarter-Deck, Dekko for
short.

Methuselah of birds, it was possessed of an uncanny gift of human
speech and understanding, and had been promoted through generation to
generation, from sailing-vessel via Merchant Service to British Navy.

As time and tragedy worked hard together to silver her hair and line her
face, so did a veritable imp of mischief, bred of her desolation, seem to
possess the old darling. She cared not a brass farthing for the opinion of her
neighbours, so that after the death of the great Queen, who had been her
staunchest friend, she had instructed Maria Hobson, her maid and also
staunchest friend, to revive the faded roses of her cheeks with the aid of
cosmetics. Things had gone from bad to worse in that respect, until her
pretty snow-white hair had been covered by a flagrant golden perruque and
the dear old face with a mask of pink and white enamel. Her eyes were
blue, and keen as a hawk's, undimmed by the tears shed in secret during her
tumultuous and tragic life; her teeth, each one in a perfect and pearly state
of preservation, were her own, for which asset she was never given the
benefit of the doubt; her tongue was vitriolic; her heart of pure gold, and
she owned a right hand which said nothing to the left of the spaces between
its fingers through which, daily ran deeds of kindness and streams of love
towards the unfortunate ones of the earth.

Her dress was invariably of grey taffeta or brocade, bunched at the back
and trailing on the ground; there were ruffles, of priceless lace at the elbow-
sleeves and V-shaped neck; a plain straw poke-bonnet served for all outdoor
functions, and an ebony stick, called "the wand" by the denizens of the
slums, who adored her, completed her picturesque toilette.

The majority feared this grande dame, a minority, if they had had the
chance, would have fawned upon her in public and laughed at or caricatured
her in private; those who really knew her, and they lived principally east of
London town, would willingly have laid themselves down and allowed her
ridiculously small feet, invariably shod in crimson, buckled, outrageously
high-heeled shoes, to trample upon their prostrate bodies, if it would have
given her pleasure so to do.

She adored young things, and had an enormous family of godsons and
goddaughters, out of which crowd Ben Kelham and Damaris Hethencourt
were supreme favourites, and about whom she had been weaving plots
when she had written her letter of invitation to the Squire.

She smoked Three Castles, which she kept in a jewelled Louis XV snuff-
box, and had a perfect tartar of a maid, who simply worshipped her.

Of a truth, a long description of a very old and very wise old woman, of
whom the great Queen had once remarked to her Consort:

"I wish I were not a queen, so that I might curtsey to Olivia."

And in this wise old woman's jewel-covered hands Fate placed the
twisted threads of passion, youth and love, and a wiser selection she could
not have made.

A bronchitic cough had taken her to Cairo just as a sooted-up lung, left
behind by the pneumonia which had followed the hunting accident had
taken Ben Kelham to Heliopolis, and for recuperation of body or mind there
is nothing to equal an Egyptian winter, even in a tourist-ridden centre.

Ben Kelham, Big Ben for short, on account of his six-feet-two, was heir
to Sir Andrew Kelham, Bart., whose estate joined the lands of Squire
Hethencourt, whom he looked upon as his greatest friend, and vice versa.
Educated at Harrow, Ben Kelham and Hugh Carden Ali had been known on
the Hill as David and Jonathan; so that the crimson, golden and brown
threads were more than uncommonly twisted.

Ben was heavy in build and slow in every way, but he was still more sure
than slow, and had never been known to give up when once he had set his
mind to the accomplishment of a task, and although he had stood in

absolute awe of beautiful Damaris since the day she had lengthened her
skirts, yet had he determined to make her his wife, even if it meant
following in Jacob's footsteps to the tune of waiting many years.

He had confided his determination to his godmother, who had
immediately taken the case in hand, and proceeded to throw bucketsful of
cold water upon his suggestion of being on the quay or doorstep to welcome
the girl to Egypt.

"My dear man," replied the tactful old lady as she rasped a match on the
sole of a crimson shoe and lit a fragrant Three Castles, "do remember that
everything will be new to the child; she will be one vast ejaculation for at
least a month. Let her get over that, let her realise that you are close at hand,
but not the least bit anxious to be under her feet, and you'll see. Remember,
she is very young, just like a bit of dough which must be stuffed with the
currants and raisins of knowledge and then well-baked in the oven of
experience before it can be handed across Life's counter to anyone. Further,
take care not to blunder into any little trap she may set you out of pique."

"But, dearest, I always do blunder when I'm out of the saddle."

"Well, even if you do, for goodness' sake keep your mouth shut. Be the
strong, silent man; women love 'em. We revel in being clubbed and pulled
into the cave by the hair; we may squeal a bit for the sake of appearances,
but we cook the breakfast nest morning without a murmur! But just ask us
to honour the cave by placing our foot over the threshold, and as sure as
anything, you'll find yourself making the early cup of tea."

CHAPTER IV

"Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, Named by the four winds,
North, South, East and West; Portals that lead to an enchanted land. . ."

T. B. ALDRICH.

Damaris duly arrived in Egypt, accompanied by Wellington—who had
shown no sign of incipient hydrophobia—and Jane Coop, her maid.

It were best to describe them both now, and so get it all over.

Whilst waiting one exeat upon Waterloo station, the girl had annexed
unto herself a holy terror in the shape of a brindle bull-pup.

The hilarious quadruped had twined its leash about one leg of its master
—who was an alien from Wapping—and the spout of a zinc watering-can
which a porter had left upon the platform; for which joke it had received a
vile cuff on its wrinkled physiognomy from the alien master.

Like some avenging goddess, Damaris, the ladylike, almost finished
product of Onslow House, sprang straight at the man, smote him with the
flat of the hand upon the face, and pounced upon the yelping pup.

"Take your leg out of the dog's chain, you idiot!" she cried, her eyes
blazing, her perfect teeth flashing in a positive snarl. "Be quick; don't be so

clumsy. How dare you hit a dog. He hit him," she announced to the
interested, sympathetic crowd. "Hit him on his lovely face.

"You gif that dog back to me, missie,—he's mine."

"He's mine. I've got him, and my mother is one of the heads of the
Society that protects children."

"That's got nothing to do wif dogs."

"This is a puppy, so it's a child," had come the decisive reply. "And
I'll buy him, though I needn't really, if I refer it to the Society."

"I'll take ten poun' for 'im."

The child fished for her purse, which, contained half-a-crown and her
ticket, and flung it with a supreme gesture of contempt at the man's feet;
then, squeezing up the dog in her arms, tore a simple gold bracelet off her
left arm and flung it after the purse.

"Worv two poun' at the mos'."

Then, from out of a first-class carriage of the train waiting to start for
Southampton slowly descended Olivia, Duchess of Longacres.

The girl and the alien had their backs turned to her, but the crowd had
seen; had looked; started to laugh, and then had become silent, so great was
the dignity of the old lady.

Clad in a voluminous grey taffeta gown, from under which peeped little
crimson shoes; covered with a huge loose ermine wrap, with the black
poke-bonnet on top of the outrageous golden perruque and the grey parrot

bobbing up and down excitedly upon her shoulder, she stood silently taking
in the scene.

There was the light of battle in the famous hawk's-eyes as she listened to
the girl defending the pup, and her splendid teeth shone in a grin of
enjoyment as she suddenly rattled her ebony stick upon the alien's ankle-
bones, those most tender bits of anatomical scaffolding.

There was a yell of pain as the alien backed hastily into the arms of a
lusty youth who had continuously besought Damaris, to allow him "ter put
it acrorst ther blighter's h'ugly mug," and a cry of delight as Damaris ran to
the old lady's side and, squeezing the pup in one arm, made the sweetest
little reverence in the pretty continental way before she excitedly wrung her
god-mother's hand.

"Marraine, he hit the puppy, and I've bought him for ten pounds; at least,
Dad will send a cheque tonight. I've given him half-a-crown and my
bracelet on account."

"Call Hobson," said her grace to the bird, who, obeying, had shrilly
piped, "Tumble up, men, tumble up," until Hobson the maid suddenly
surged, from the second-class and ploughed her way through the delighted
crowd.

"Give the purse and bracelet to my maid, you———"

"Swab," supplemented the parrot.

"——-at once," finished her grace, just as, with a cry of "Here's Dad!"
Damaris ran to meet her father, who, having got hung up in the traffic, had
failed to meet the train. He listened patiently, with dancing eyes, to the
story, smiled across at the duchess, gave the man a pound-note and a jolly

good talking to, and acquired a bull pup with the Rodney Stone strain,
which they promptly christened Wellington, as it had won at Waterloo.

Wellington forthwith developed an inordinate jealousy of Jane Coop.

Jane Coop was maid, adviser and buffer to the girl whom she loved more
than anyone on earth.

Born on the Squire's lands, she had developed a positive genius for
mothering delicate lambs and calves and sickly chicks, so that when a crisis
had arrived almost immediately after the birth of Damaris, the Squire had
bundled the highly-certificated nurse into a motor and sent her packing back
to London, and called upon Jane Coop to rise to the occasion.

She had risen.

Bonny and plump, she had taken the weakly little bit of humanity, also
the situation, into her strong, capable hands; treated the mother and babe
just as she would have treated a couple of delicate lambs, and pulled them
both through.

From that day forth she had dominated the house, tyrannised over the
Squire and his lady, defied each and every governess who had shown signs
of undue strictness, and found her reward for her devotion in the love of the
child who teased her to death and—in the long run—obeyed her.

She had shown herself a positive sheep-dog on board the boat. She had
rounded up her white lamb and yapped upon the heels of those who dared
approach with too great familiarity; had bristled and shown her teeth upon
every possible occasion, until those who would fain have led the girl into
new and verdant pastures had fled at the sheep-dog's approach, leaving
them both to enjoy the novelty of everything, each after her own kind.

Damaris revelled in it all: the seagulls; the lighthouses; the ships that
passed in the day and night; and the tail-end of a storm they hit up in the
Bay, whilst Jane Coop invented new verses to the Litany as she tried, in her
cabin, to solve the problem of two into one, and Wellington, somewhere
under the water-line, daily gave a fine imitation of hell-bound to a circle of
admiring seamen.

To his last hour at sea Captain X will forever retain the memory of what
it cost him in strength of will to maintain his dignity, when, standing
straight and exceedingly beautiful, with one hand full of lists, the huge
bulldog at her feet, with a black bow under his left ear, and an assembly of
the greatest sufferers before her, Damaris, two days before arriving at Port
Said, solemnly read out the items and the shop price of each article chewed,
damaged or totally destroyed during the voyage by the dog.

"Shoes, boots, pants, edges of trousers; two pipes, one pouch, six packets
of gaspers; one entire tray of crockery; one air-cushion dropped in fright by
stewardess; one coil of rope, one life-buoy, one tin can dented, one man's
ankles slightly bruised; one bare patch to ship's cat's back. . . ." And so on
and so forth; whilst murmurs arose from the sufferers, who chorused that
"they didn't want no compensation, only too pleased to part with their bits,
as long . . ." etc., etc.

"I do not think the fault was all on one side, Miss Hethencourt," summed
up the Captain, speaking in guttural consonant and flattened vowel from
suppressed emotion. "The—er—the plaintiff must have approached the dog
as he was chained and———"

"A bulldog," broke in Damaris, "is a magnet to the best in every human
being. They simply could not help themselves; they were drawn within
reach of his teeth; they——"

"I cannot quite———" interrupted the captain. "Yes?"

Chips, the carpenter, showed signs of bursting with information withheld.

"Beggin' your pardon for interruption, sir, but what; the lady says is true;
we just couldn't keep away. I saw the Chink—beg pardon, sir, I mean Ling-
a-Ling the laundryman, burning joss-sticks in front of 'im,"—pointing of
stub finger towards shameless dog—"one night when the dawg was asleep.
Jus' worship, please, sir, on all parts. And Mrs. Pudge what didn't oughter
'ave been down in our quarters, dropped the air cushion, sir, 'cause she
missed in stays———"

"I cannot," interrupted the captain—then choked at a mental vision of
Mrs. Pudge, who scorned such frivolous inventions as whalebone to support
the figure—then trumpeted behind his handkerchief, ending in that
combined half-snort, half-giggle which is so disastrous to dignity and
complexion, "I cannot allow the—the—er—form of the Company's
stewardesses to be so discussed."

"Beggin' yer pardon, sir," fiercely rejoined Chips—who was getting a bit
of his own back on Mrs. Pudge—"I'm using the nautical expression, sir; she
failed to get about when that there dawg"—pointing of stub thumb at
heedless dog—"growled 'cause she has water in the knee. I'm usin' a an—
anatomical expression now, sir—her knee—this, sir"—slapping of knee
with horny hand of toil—"The ship's knees, miss," addressing Damaris,
whose straight brows had almost met in puzzlement, "is a chock on the
forepart of the lowermast on which the 'eel—heel, miss, of the topmast
rests. Yuss, sir. Her knee may 'ave water in it; but no one couldn't say the
same of her grog."

To prevent death from combustion, the speechless captain here intimated
by signs that the culprit should stand up. And the brindle of Rodney Stone

strain stood, whilst the men's eyes glistened as they fidgeted upon their feet
from very joy in the spectacle.

His skull was massive and perfectly-shaped, the under-jaw square and
strong, thrust up and beyond the upper; the teeth were perfect, even, large
and also strong; the nose was black and large, well back between the eyes,
which were set low down and wide apart, but well in front and round, with
a deep "stop" between them; the honestest outward sign of his gallant
loving heart. The ears were rose; not in colour, of course, but of rose-leaf
shape, set high and small and fine; the face was closely-wrinkled, the
"chop" well down, and the loose skin in abundant folds about his throat and
neck.

The chest was wide and deep and prominent; the shoulders were
tremendously muscular; the body was short, with a Roach back, fine in the
rear; the forelegs, short and strong, with the developed calves which give
them the appearance of being bowed, whereas the bones are really straight;
the feet turned out a bit, with toes split up and arched; the tail set low and
straight down and anything but a glad tail. His heart was of the finest,
honest, loving, courageous, capable of hurling its owner to instant battle or
death, in defence of the one loved, at other times rendering him, in its
gentleness, an almost ludicrous spectacle of adoration. Of such was
Wellington, and if the description is somewhat detailed and technical it is
because he happens a good deal into the book.

The duchess had been put into the train for Port Said by Ben Kelham,
who, inwardly kicking at her sage advice, looked as despondent as a camel
who considers its strength unequal to its burden.

"Cheer up, lad," she cried as the train moved off. "Cheer up; something is
sure to happen before long."

Which was a perfectly safe prophecy to make where Damaris was
concerned.

Arrived at Port Said, she put off in a boat with her maid and her parrot,
and found her godchild, who did not expect her, on deck, entranced with all
she saw.

Yes! of course Port Said is a sink of iniquity and a place of odours and a
fold for native wolves in sheep's clothing; also a centre for antiquities made
in Birmingham, or by the vendor himself in the hot weather; and a market
for things which should not be sold, much less bought.

In fact, in one short sentence, it is a deal of cosmopolitan wrong-doing.

All the same, you need not buy and you need not listen nor look, and if it
is the first bit of the Orient you have meet with for the first time in your life,
well! it is the East, and jolly exciting and interesting, too.

Damaris rushed at the old lady, and having curtsied to her, gathered her
up in her strong arms and hugged her tightly, just as Captain X, who during
one trip had had the duchess as passenger and therefore loved her, came
along.

As they turned in the direction of the dining-saloon, the girl looked over
her shoulder at the two maids, and smiled.

With a great love of their respective mistresses as their sole bond in
common they stood, otherwise divided, staring at each other.

"Pleased to meet you again," volunteered country-bred Jane, offering a
plump hand.

"Hoping you are in good health," responded Maria Hobson, making a
corner in strawberry-leaves as she just touched the finger-tips.

"Wellington, you have met Dekko, I think," laughed the girl.

"Woomph!" grunted the dog disdainfully, as he cocked an eye at the bird,
which ruffled its feathers, spread its red tail and looked down sideways and
spitefully for a long moment.

"My Gawd!" it suddenly shrieked. "My Gawd!"

And it swung about and rubbed its soft grey pate against its mistress's
outrageous golden perruque, then hurled itself onto the captain's shoulder.

CHAPTER V.

"Oh, yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill."

TENNYSON.

After the fight in the bazaar, the ducal party stayed for another fortnight
in Cairo, during which time Damaris saw as much of the place and its
surroundings as she could in fourteen days and a few hours out of each of
the fourteen nights; whilst her godmother played bridge or poker, paid and
received visits, took her to dances and parties, and busied her fingers in the
tangled threads Fate had tossed into her lap.

It was an understood thing that the girl should be ready to conduct the old
aristocrat to the dining-room at the dinner-hour and give her the evening;
other than that her time was her own, though, owing to her innate courtesy
and her love for her godmother, she never once absented herself without
having obtained permission.

"You are a positive tonic, child, in these perplexing days," remarked her
grace, when the girl had concluded the recital of the fight in the bazaar.
"Only, do remember to come straight to me if ever you get into a real
scrape."

And that night, the old lady, who had lost heavily at poker, fairly snapped
at Maria Hobson, who, tucking her up in bed, remarked, greatly daring,
upon the amount of liberty allowed the child.

"Don't be foolish, my good woman," she said, "and do for goodness' sake
mind your business of looking after me. Although my god-daughter may
bluff a bit for the fun of the game, and get let down a bit for her own good,
yet I shouldn't advise anyone to get seeing her too often. Fate dealt her a
royal straight flush in hearts, and better that you can't—no! not even if you
hold a full house of intrigue and bad intent t'other end of Life's table."

"Humff!" replied the maid heavily through her nose, not having
understood one word of her mistress's admonition.

Each day at breakfast and at dinner a bunch, big or little, of simple or
hothouse flowers lay beside the girl's plate, without name or message.

Now, the finding of flowers upon your table does not, in Egypt,
necessarily imply that the donor thereof is a son of the desert; the maître
d'hôtel has been known to do it out of deference to your rank or purse; and
only once had Jane Coop had the mixed pleasure of meeting the deaf-mute
Nubian who daily left the posies at the hotel.

Refreshed from her siesta, she had descended to the hall via the stairs
instead of the lift, and bumped into the ebony-hued slave as he bent to lay a
sheaf of flowers upon the matting outside her mistress's door.

He had straightened himself and salaamed almost to the ground—which
had delighted Jane Coop—and had offered the bunch to her.

"Oh, no, my man!" she had said, bridling, "you don't come over me that
way. Just you take that trash back to where it came from. My young lady

ain't that kind," and had shaken her fist in his face and flounced downstairs
to lay a complaint.

What with the militant maids, the parrot and the dog, the ducal party was
continually breaking out in some direction or another, but the maître d'hôtel,
who simply worshipped the old lady, merely smiled and poured the oil of
soothing words upon the troubled waters.

The girl had quite casually recounted the fight in the bazaar, and the wise
old woman had made no comment; but, all the same, next day she
indifferently asked a few questions of Lady Thistleton, who had a big heart,
narrow mind, an ever-wagging tongue and two daughters.

"Oh, that's the son of the Arab and the English girl. You must remember
the fuse there was in England over the runaway marriage—what was her
name?—how she could, you know——"

"Ah! yes. You must be talking of Jill Carden. I knew her very well.
Naughty girl, she refused the invitation I sent them asking them to come to
England and stay with me, and gave up writing to me after a while. Does
she live in Cairo?"

It seemed that Jill, the wife of the Sheikh el-Umbar, lived in the Flat
Oasis t'other side of the Canal, in Arabia proper, but, according to current
gossip, was at the moment upon a visit to her son at the House 'an
Mahabbha, which had been built for the elder branch of the House el-
Umbar on a verdant patch watered by the springs, from the limestone hills
which stretch on the desert side of the Oasis of Khargegh.

"He's not in Cairo, then?"

"No; he left to-day," replied the gossip. "You see, his mother is expected
any time at his home, if she isn't already there. My maid will chatter so,
there's absolutely no stopping her. Funnily enough, I arrived at the station as
he was leaving in a special train. Such a handsome man, educated in
England, millionaire too. Of course it's a case of a touch of the tarbrush—
such a pity, too!"

The duchess suddenly shivered.

"Little Jill!" she said gently. "Little Jill! I must go and see her if she will
let me. Ah! General, what about a hand at écarté before dinner?"—and she
rose with a stormy rustling of her softly-scented silks, leaving the gossip
wondering in what way she had put her foot in it.

That night, as she lay like a little brown mouse under the mosquito-net,
watching the stars through the open window, the old lady suddenly decided
to bestir herself.

"It's too risky! She's too beautiful, too young and unsophisticated," she
murmured as she lit a cigarette under the curtains, which is strictly against
the rules. "I'd bet my last piastre that Jill Carden's son's all right, but, all the
same, one has to reckon with the glamour of the East. Love's all very well
in a cool climate, but it's the dickens out here. Must get her anchored in safe
waters. What d'you think, Dekko old friend? What course shall I set? Shall
we go home, or to Heliopolis?"

The bird scrambled awkwardly on to the dressing-table.

"Well, old man, how about it?"

"Steer a straight course for hell, old dear," came the muffled reply, as the
bird twisted its head under its wing, then untucked it to murmur sleepily:

"T'hell!"

So she made up her mind to move on the very day after the girl's
birthday, which fell in a fortnights time. She would, indeed, have left at
once if it had not been that she had issued invitations on a gigantic scale for
a fancy-dress ball in honour of the anniversary.

Inwardly Damaris rebelled at the suggestion of moving on to Heliopolis;
outwardly she acquiesced without enthusiasm.

"But if it will do that nasty little cough good, dearest, why wait for the
ball?"

"Do you want to go, Maris?"

"The desert will be so near," evaded the girl. "Half-an-hour's ride at the
most, so—so Ben Kelham told me, and there you see the desert, miles upon
miles of it stretching right away like the sea."

The hawk-eyes flashed across the girl's face, taking in the forced
indifference of the expression and the light which gleamed far down in the
eyes.

"I had a letter from Ben this morning. His lung has been troubling him;
that is why he hasn't been over."

"Did you—has it—is it—?" rather lamely replied the girl.

He had written Damaris a perfunctory note of welcome to the Land of the
Pharaohs; then, a week later, had come over to dine. He had ached to take
his beautiful little chum up in his arms and shake her for her haughtiness
and by sheer strength of arms and will force her to say "yes" to the question
which it took him all his strength not to ask.

Since childhood he had been her slave, her door-mat, and the butt of her
various moods, feeling infinitely well rewarded by a careless smile or word;
so that he found it difficult, in fact well-nigh impossible, to act up to her
grace's plans and suddenly transpose himself into the strong, silent man.

The girl, spoilt and accustomed to slavish devotion and used to his
worship, felt incensed, then hurt, and finally perplexed, and, to hide it all,
retired therewith into a shell of icy reserve.

He had adored her openly, and now, seemingly, looked upon her as just
one of the crowd of women in the hotel; she had taken his adoration for
granted and as a right, to waken one morning to find the gem she had tossed
in amongst the rubbish of her little experiences, gone!

Is there a greater mistake in the world than that of looking upon love as
an ordinary possession, instead of as a rare jewel?

They were both very young, so that they suffered the agonies of doubt
and uncertainty, whilst the worldly-wise old dame smiled up her sleeve.

From the hour of the early cup of tea until breakfast-time on the morning
of the ball, which was also the girl's birthday morning, tarbusched,
impudent young monkeys of messenger boys, bearing gifts and flowers,
arrived in a stream at the hotel.

Flowers in pots and vases and bunches lay everywhere in the suite;
shawls of many colours, silken veils, slippers, albums of views of Egypt,
rare antiques (made mostly in Birmingham), one mummied cat (genuine),
scarabs (suspicious), and one live gazelle littered the place.

Ben Kelham had bought her a finger-napkin ring of dull gold; through it
he had forced some flowers, and sent it along.

She held it tight in her hand for a moment, then deliberately and
ostentatiously laid it amongst the clutter on the table, whilst her grace
peeped from behind the newspaper which she was reading in bed.

Arrived at the table in the breakfast-room, the girl suddenly flushed pink
and then went quite white.

Right in the centre, flanked on one side by the glass dish of glowing fruit
and the other by a cut-glass jar of Keiller's marmalade, stood a cage tied at
the top with silver ribbon and containing two cooing doves.

The doves were just ordinary ones, but their prison was no ordinary cage.
Fair-sized and square, it was made of fine white bars of ivory. The
underside was also ivory, square and unblemished, and would have made an
ideal hairpin-tray; it stood upon ebony feet inlaid with infinitesimal
precious stones.

"It has but just arrived, Miss Hethencourt," said the maître d'hôtel, who
had been fluttering around upon the tiptoe of a most unusual curiosity.
"There is no name, no message."

"Please send it to my room," she replied indifferently, whilst, for some
unaccountable reason, her heart throbbed as she responded to the birthday
greetings which came from every corner of the room.

CHAPTER VI

"A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive."

COLERIDGE.

"May the blessing of Allah who is God be upon thee, O woman!"

The sonorous words, of the benediction rang through the room as Hugh
Carden Ali stood with the silken curtain drawn back in one hand and the
right raised in blessing upon his mother, who stood with arms outstretched
in the centre of the room.

Then he knelt to receive the benison of the woman he loved, smiled when
he felt the small hands upon his head and, leaping to his feet, swung her up
into his arms, covering her face with kisses.

"You beautiful darling!" he said, as he crushed her up, to the
derangement of her perfumed silks and satins and many jewels. "It's just
heavenly coming back to you, you dear, understanding mother."

The woman's heart leapt to battle, for in the last words, in the way her
beloved son looked down upon her in the tone of his voice, she knew that,
somewhere out in the world, he had received a hurt. She knew so little of
him, had only had him for such a little, little while under the influence of

her love and in the shelter of her heart, and she loved him, her firstborn,
with a love beyond words. Thinking to do the best for him, and making the
biggest mistake of all, beating down her beloved husband's opposition, she
had sent the boy to England, and in the subsequent eight years had only
seen him twice.

"He is of the East, Woman of my Heart! Behold, I have studied him," had
said the Sheikh, all those years ago. "Let him be, else evil may befall him."

But Jill, his beautiful wife, had insisted, and his love for her being
beyond telling, the great Arab had submitted to her wish.

For so it had been written.

And what can be the outcome of the tragic mixing of blood? Nothing but
pain.

"Come to the roof and talk, Mother, under the stars."

So up the marble staircase, with his arm about her waist, to the roof they
went, where the silken awnings lay folded and the scented white flowers
hung asleep.

They stood under the canopy of purple night studded with flashing,
silvery points, as the soft winds carried to them the notes of a guitar softly
thrummed in the shade of the palms.

"It is Mary, dear," happily whispered the woman. "She came with me to
welcome you." And then she clasped her hands at the blaze of anger which
swept the man's face.

"Most gracious Mother, I am master of my house, and, save for your
ever-esteemed, ever-desired presence, I cannot have woman set foot in it

without my consent. When I have the desire for one as wife, plaything or
servant, then I will give orders."

"But, Hugh, Mary is your sister!"

"Mary is my sister, and I do not deem it wise or seemly that she should
run about the country at her own wish or whim."

"But, Hugh,———"

"Dear, let me speak. I saw so much of woman in Europe that the
yashmak, the barku, the seclusion and modesty of the East have become
dear to me above all else. Have you forgotten, dear, the restaurants, the
theatres, the parks and, Allah! the streets? The half-stripped bodies, the
craving for excitement, the wine, the nights turned into day! Why, one has
but to stretch the hand, for flowers to be laid therein; the feet trip at every
step with the trap of woman's hair; the quarry stands waiting for the arrow;
there is not even the incentive of the chase, the hot pursuit, the lust of the
kill. I speak as my father's son, and in my house I will have privacy and
seclusion and seemliness. Women shall be brought to me when I desire their
presence." And the steeliness of the voice brought the woman up-sitting as
he gave her an order cloaked in the guise of a favour begged. "And I shall
be glad if you will ask my sister to keep within the women's quarters until I
send for her."

"But——"

And she ripped the corner of her veil between perturbed fingers when,
upon the clapping of hands, a slave ran swiftly to learn his master's
pleasure, then hastened away to find the head body-woman of the
guesthouse assigned to women-visitors.

After which the sweet thrumming of the guitar instantly stopped.

On more than one night they talked under the stars, sitting on satin
cushions, or leaning on the marble fret-work of the balustrade looking due
east to where, so many miles away, flows the blue-green Nile, as it has
flowed through the centuries, all unheeding of the passing of mighty
kingdoms.

And yet had the mother learned nothing of the hurt reflected in her
firstborn's eyes.

"Most precious Mother," he was saying, as he stood flicking the pages of
the latest illustrated paper just arrived from Cairo, but which was really a
volume of the Book of Life written, printed and published by Fate. "If it
pleases you to stay when I am gone, will you do so just as long as you find
happiness in my dwelling?"

"You are going, Hugh,—so soon—for long?"

"There has come a report of lion in the Nubian Desert, as far north as
Deir el-Bahari. I can hardly believe it, for it is years and years since a lion
has been seen even in the Khor Baraka. However, a runner from Nubia
came in this morning, so there may be something in it. God grant it, for the
sport and the danger would be great, killing or being killed, in the rocks and
ruins of the Temple. Also I could visit my Tents of Purple and of Gold. How
long shall I be gone, sweet Mother? That is known only to Allah, to whom
our goings and our comings are as the drifting of the sands."

"Your tents are very beautiful, my son. The servants are waiting for your
orders before pitching the—the—middle one. Without asking permission, I
went to inspect them. Just before your return, just to see if everything was
quite all right. One can never quite trust the servants."

Jill might have been sitting on a rectory lawn, talking about her linen-
cupboard or spring-cleaning with a neighbour, instead of one of the
wonders of modern Egypt. In fact, so quaint was it that the man laughed
and swung her onto the balustrade.

"I'm not surprised Father worships the ground your ridiculous little feet
tread on, Mater," he said, causing his mother to gasp, so English did he
sound, so Oriental did he look.

"Dear!" she said gently, as she scrutinised him with a mother's eyes and
touched his face and patted his cheek and pulled a bit here and there at his
fine white linen coat, upon which in coarse thread was embroidered the
Hawk of Old Egypt. "Dear! don't you think you would be happier if you
were to marry and—settle down?"

And it was then that there came to her the full explanation of the hurt
reflected in her firstborn's eyes.

"I shall never marry, dear," very gently replied the man, so fearful was he
of causing pain to the woman who had borne him. "I—I—you see, I
cannot."

"Cannot, Hugh? But, my dear, what is the matter? You will have to, some
day, you know. You are your father's eldest son," answered the woman,
who, wrapped in perfect love and happiness, had never given a thought to
the far-reaching effects of her marriage with the Arabian. "Dear son, there
are so many beautiful, cultured, gentle women here and at home—I mean in
England—you———"

"Mother, please! Oh, Mother, you don't understand—dear heavens! you
don't understand. Listen—and, how I wish my father, whom I honour, were

here to comfort you. Forgive me, dear, forgive me for the pain I must cause
you———"

And the woman went white to the lips under a sudden blinding flash of
understanding and her proud eyes dropped to the hands clenched in her lap.

"I want to marry, Mother of mine." He spoke in the Arabian tongue,
which, is so atune to love, "for behold love in the space of an hour has
grown within me. The floods of love drown me, the full-blossomed trees of
passion throw their shade upon the surging waters, and, behold, the shade is
that of tenderness. From the midst of the flood where I am like to drown, I
stretch my arms towards the rocky shore where stands, looking towards me,
the desire of my soul. Behold, my eyes have seen her, and, behold, she is
white, with hair like the desert at sunset, and eyes even as the pools of
Lebanon. She is as a rod to be bent, and as a vase of perfume to be broken
upon a night of love. And I love her—her—out of all women—a doe to be
hunted at dawn, a mare to be spurred through the watches of the night
———"

"Hugh!"

"I love her as my father loved you—my father, of whom I am the eldest
son—son of a highborn father, son of a highborn mother—outcast—
outcast!"

"For pity's sake, Hugh, stop!"

But the storm swept on, tearing the veil from the woman's eyes.

"Behold, I care not for the plucking of garden blossoms, therefore are the
beautiful, docile women of the East not for me, and the thorns upon the
hedge of convention defied, the barbed wires of racial distinction keep me

from the hedgerow flower, born of the wind and the sky and the summer
heat, which I covet.

"Among men I am nothing; I may not claim equality with the scavenger
of the Western streets; or with the donkey-boys of the Eastern bazaar. Here I
am served with fear and servility, being a man of riches; across the waters, I
may sun myself in the smiles of women as long as I have no desire to wed."
He suddenly seized the woman, holding her in a grip of iron which left
great bruises on her arms. "Do you know what she called me, Mother?—
that harlot of a line of noblemen—what she flung in my teeth because,
seeing in her a woman of the streets hidden under the cloak of marriage, I
refused to be tempted?"

There fell a terrible silence, and then a few whispered words.

"She called me a half-caste, Mother!—me—a half-caste!"

And the mother fell at her son's feet and bowed her head to the ground,
and he swept her up into his arms, raining kisses upon the piteous face.

"I don't blame you, sweetheart-mother," he said in English, whilst she
sobbed on his heart. "Am I not the fruit of a brave woman's great love?
Could there be anything finer than that? But my father in me made my
whole body clamour for the desert when I was in England; my mother in
me makes my heart throb in the desert for just one hour of her cool, misty
country, one hour on a hill-top in which to watch the pearl-gray dawn.
Dearest, dearest, don't sob so. It is a case of two affirmatives making a
negative; two great nationalities decried, derided, rendered null and void in
their offspring through the dictates of those who, in religion, prate that we
are all brothers. I have just got to stick it, my mother, and life is not very
long. But I shall never marry." And as he spoke, Fate flicked a page of an
illustrated paper, which was but the volume of the Book of Life, and

perhaps only a mother's eyes would have noticed the sudden tightening of
the hand upon the marble of the balustrade as the man looked down into the
pictured beauty of the woman he loved.

And, having read what had been written, he knelt to receive his mother's
blessing.

"To the Tents of Purple and Gold, my darling?" she asked, smiling so
bravely to hide her breaking heart.

"Not just yet, dear; a bit further North first, I think."

"For long?"

"I do not know, dear. Bless me, O my mother."

She blessed him and called to him as he stood at the head of the marble
stairway:

"Come back to me, my son!"

"That, O woman, is in the hands of Allah, who is God."

And he turned and left her, and she, having wept her heart out and her
beautiful eyes dim, took up the illustrated paper which was a volume of the
Book of Life, and turned the pages.

"Ah!" she said. "How beautiful!"

It was just a simple photograph of Damaris at a tennis tournament, and
underneath the information that the most popular and beautiful visitor in
Cairo would celebrate her birthday in a week's time, that in honour of the
occasion her god-mother, the Duchess of Longacres, had issued invitations

for a fancy-dress ball, after which social event she and her god-daughter
would proceed to the Desert Palace Hotel, Heliopolis.

"I wonder," whispered Jill, "I wonder if she would come to see me. She
was always such a wise old woman. I wonder if there is a way out"—and
she stretched her arms out towards the desert. "Hahmed!" she called,
"Beloved, I love you, and my heart is breaking,"—and she lifted her head
and listened to the sound of many horses running; then bowed her head and
wept.

The dawn was nigh to breaking, and yet the parade of horses was not
finished; whilst the trainer, the head groom, the stud groom, the under-
grooms and the rank and file of the stables tore their beards or their hair as
they endeavoured to please their master, whilst they waited anxiously for
the return of the man who had been hurriedly sent to fetch in the mare, Pi-
Kay, who was out to grass, and as wild as a bird on the wing.

Singly, or in pairs, every priceless quadruped had been put through its
paces upon the track of tan imported from England.

Three coal-black stallions, brothers to el-Sooltan, even then in Cairo, and
famous throughout Egypt, tore past him like a cyclone and left him
indifferent; a chestnut brood mare, whose price was above that of many
rubies, trotted up at his call and snuffled a welcome in his sleeve, searched
for sugar in his hand and found it, and whinnied gently when he turned
away; bays, piebalds, roans, greys, trotted, galloped, jumped, whilst their
master smoked endless cigarettes and the stud groom prayed fervently to
Allah.

"By the patience of the Prophet," the master suddenly cried, turning on
the man, "hast thou nothing else? Is there no jewel amongst my horses?
Hast thou not in all my stables one of the Al Hamsa, a descendant of the

mares who found favour in the eyes of Mohammed the prophet of Allah
who is God? The mare Alia—has she been, perchance, as sterile as thy
wits?"

And then he stopped short and stood in silence, watching the loveliest
picture any human could wish to see.

Picking up her dainty feet as though she walked upon hot stones, tossing
her proud little head, with big, gentle eyes, spreading nostrils and fine small
ears almost touching at the tips, mane flowing, tail set high and spread,
came the snow-white mare, Pi-Kay.

Allah! but the loveliness of that picture as she stood, thoroughbred,
perfect, as proud as any queen, as scornful as any spoiled beauty, as
confused at the sight of her master as any bride!

Ten yards away and motionless she stood from this man who seemed to
take no notice of her, and then she wheeled, and flung up her heels; then
stopped and looked at him along her satin flank and piqued with his
indifference suddenly sped out into the desert.

Then, softly, melodiously, the man's voice called her, ringing like a bell
under the lightening sky, and behold, love awoke in the mare's heart and she
turned and raced back towards him, longing for his hand and the grip of his
knees upon her. But with her feet upon the tan, she turned her back upon
him and danced across towards the coal-black stallions, causing their
grooms to hold on to them with both hands; then she came back to circle
round about this man, who seemingly took no notice of her vagaries, not
even when she reared just behind him, pawing the air, nor when she lashed
out at a humble sayis, missing him by a hair; until, at last, overpowered by
curiosity and love, curveting, rearing, throwing her feet and making a

frightful to-do over nothing at all, she came close up—oh! very close—and
whinnied gently.

With one hand clutching the silvery mane and in one bound he was
across the bare back and away with her into the desert, gripping her with his
knees, calling to her by every love-name he could think of.

And out there alone in the desert at the hour of prayer, he slipped from
her and, turning towards Mecca, raised his hands to heaven.

"O God of the West! O Allah of the East! Give me one single hour of
love!"

And the mare, Pi-Kay, wonderful in her beauty, raced from him far out
into the desert, leaving him alone with his God; then stood quite still, with
fine small ears pricked, waiting for the call she knew would come. And
when it came ringing clear over the golden sand, she raced back to him and
pushed against him, until he sprang upon her and turned her towards the
East.

"By the war-horses," he cried, quoting from Al-Koran, "which run swiftly
to battle, with a panting noise; and by those who strike fire by dashing their
hoofs against the stones; and by those who make a sudden invasion on the
enemy early in the morning and therein raise the dust, and therein pass
through the midst of the adverse troops . . . . by the Message of the Great
Book and by my love will I wrest one hour from life."

And urging the mare with the whip of love to the uttermost of her
wonderful speed, he thundered back across the path of sand, which was to
be trodden by his feet alone, in spite of the plots which Zulannah the
courtesan was even then weaving about him—to her own advancement.

CHAPTER VII

". . . . and she painted her face, and tired her head, and looked out at a
window."

II KINGS.

The house of the "Scarlet Enchantress," with its balconies, turrets and
outer and inner courts, stood quite by itself at one corner of the Square, in a
big, neglected garden. It had been built by means of untold gold and the
destruction of scores of miserable, picturesque hovels, which, poor as they
might be, had however meant home to many of the needy in the Arabian
quarters of Cairo. It would be useless to look for that building covered in
white plaster now; it was, later, looted and burned to the ground.

A beautiful wanton of fourteen summers, ambitious, relentless, with the
eyes of an innocent child, the morals of a jackal and a fair supply of brain-
cunning rather than intellect, Zulannah sat this night of stars in a corner of
her balcony overlooking the Square, smoking endless cigarettes.

Courtesan of the highest rank, she had plied her ruthless trade for three
successful years, accumulating incredible wealth in jewels and hard cash.
Her ambition knew no bounds; her greed no limit; her jealousy of other
women had become a by-word in the north.

Physically she was perfect; otherwise, she had not one saving grace, and
her enemies were legion. She had driven hard bargains, demanding the very
rings off men's fingers in exchange for kisses; shutting the door with callous
finality in the face of those she had beggared; she had disowned her mother,
who, stricken with ophthalmia, begged in the streets; she had no mercy for
man, woman or beast, yet all had gone well until love had come to her.

Love comes to harlots and to queens as well as to us ordinary women,
and they suffer every whit as much as we do, perhaps more keenly on
account of the hopeless positions they fill.

It had come to Zulannah, uncontrollably, that night when, unveiled,
garbed in silks and satins and hung with jewels, she brazenly graced the
stage-box at a gala performance.

She looked down, and Ben Kelham, in the end seat of the first row of
stalls, looked up and looked and looked, seeing nothing, being blinded with
love of Damaris.

Zulannah drove back in her Rolls-Royce to the edge of the Arabian
quarter, where, owing to the narrowness of the lanes called by courtesy
streets, she alighted to finish what remained of the journey in a litter swung
from the shoulders of four Nubian slaves, and, arrived at the great house,
summoned her special bodyguard, Qatim the Ethiopian; and for acquiring
information down to the smallest detail about some special individual there
is, surely, no detective agency on earth to compare to one ordinary, native
servant.

He loves intrigue!

So that, twenty-four hours later, Zulannah laughed shrilly when Qatim
the Ethiopian repeated all he had learned of the white man and the white

maid he presumably loved.

"Love!" she scoffed. "He has not met me!"

But in the weeks that followed no plot had succeeded, no device or subtle
invitation had lured the bird to the list, so that she beat sharply upon a silver
gong this night of the stars, upon which the Ethiopian came running hastily
to cast himself upon the ground at the jewelled, henna'd feet.

"Get up," she said, kicking him upon the side of the head; whereupon he
rose, chalking up one more mark on his own particular slate of Life, upon
one side of which was written Desire and the other Revenge.

He stood six-foot-four in his loin-cloth, as black and glistening as a
polished ebony statue. The enormous hands at the end of great, over-long
arms almost touched his knees; the chest and shoulders and abdomen were
hard as iron, rippling with muscle under the oiled skin; the feet were huge
and pink of sole, and the animality of the man was intensified by a certain
gleam of intelligence somewhere in the impassive negroid face.

The woman, took no notice of the magnificent physique; it neither
repulsed nor attracted her—he was a slave.

"Run and give orders that no one is admitted! Hasten!"

"Mistress, a great noble waits at——-"

"Desirest thou thy tongue split, thou black dog, that thou answerest
Zulannah? Haste thee, and return!"

And far into the night they talked, those two, planning death or
destruction, anything as long as it attained the desire of the woman who,
looking into the future, took no notice of the mountain of disaster beside her

in the shape of the Ethiopian who desired and hated her with all the bestial
passion of his race.

Then, just as far down in the east the sky lightened, she sat suddenly
upright and clapped her jewelled hands.

"Know'st thou the eunuch who guards the harem empty of women in the
palace of—ah! the barbarity of the name!—E'u Car-r-den Ali? He who
perchance would give one-half, nay, all of his great wealth in return for the
coal-blackness of thy odorous skin. There is to be held a big entertainment
within the walls of the white man's hotel, and soon. An entertainment where
the whites dance foolishly in foolish raiment, disguised as that which they
are not and with covered faces. What easier than for me to obtain entry as
one of them under my veils and have speech with the man I love? And if he
is as thou sayest, besotted with love of this white girl, then will I use the
man of barbarous name as a tool to bring about that which I desire. Know'st
thou the eunuch?"

"Mistress, he is my twin-brother."

"Twin of thee! Behold, did not thy mother die of fright, at sight of such
monstrosities?"

"Nay, mistress, there are six sons younger than thy slave, each one of
which could break thee in one hand."

Zulannah sprang to her feet and, seizing a short whip from a table, smote
the man again and again until his face ran blood.

"Thou vile brute, darest thou so to speak! Behold, this is but a foretaste of
what will befall thy black carcase before the hour is spent."

"Call thy slaves, mistress; split my tongue; whip the soles from off my
feet, the flesh from my body, even to the bones, and thou shalt never meet
my twin-brother, who even now prepareth the great palace for the coming
of the"—he spat—"bird of different-coloured plumage."

And Zulannah, understanding that she must not overstep the limit if she
desired to attain her end, flung the whip full into the stolid, indifferent face,
and fled, raving obscenities, into the house.

CHAPTER VIII

"If God in His wisdom have brought close
The day when I must die,
That day by water or fire or air
My feet shall fall in the destined snare
Wherever my road may lie."

DANTE GABRIEL ROSETTI

"May I come in? Oh, Maris, what do you think? There is to be a real
native fortune-teller in the Winter Garden. They've made the corner near the
fountain like an Arab's tent, and he'll tell us our horoscopes in the sand, and
all sorts of things."

"Not forgetting the stars, let us hope?"

"Oh, there's sure to be that."

Damaris laughed as she turned in her chair and looked at the excited little
visitor in fancy-dress.

"You do look sweet. A Light of the Harem, for certain."

"Yes; and what do you think? There are three dozen Lights. Isn't it a
shame? I thought I should be the only one. And there are two and a half

dozen Sheikhs, and I don't know how many dozen Bedouins. You are—
what are you? You look awfully—awfully—er—I don't quite know what."

Damaris adjusted the selva, the quaint silver kind of tube between the
eyebrows which connects the yashmak and the tarhah or head-veil, took a
final look in the mirror, and rose.

"I am an Egyptian woman of the humblest class."

She was all in black, as befits a member of that class. The simple bodice,
cut in a yoke, of the black muslin dress fitted her like a glove; the skirt fell
in wide folds from the waist and swung about her ankles encircled by big
brass rings, which clashed as she moved. She wore the black yashmak and
tarhah; upon her arms were many brass bracelets which tinkled; on one
hand she wore a ring and there were flesh-coloured silken hose and sandals
upon her feet. She had made a mistake and henna'd her finger-tips, which
members of the humblest class have not time to do—besides, their patient
hands matter so little—and her great eyes looked as black as the yashmak
over which they shone.

Her beautiful face was hidden, yet was she infinitely alluring, tantilising,
mysterious, under her veils.

Heavens! if only women knew how easy it is to enhance the looks by the
simple method of touching up the eyes with kohl and covering the rest of
the face!

"All of us in veils and masks will have to take them off at one."

"Yes, there'll be the rub," said Damaris, as she knelt down beside the
perplexed, growling bulldog.

"Don't know Missie? Don't love her?"

"Woomph!" replied Wellington, hurling his great weight into her lap.

"How he loves you, Maris!"

"Yes, miss, he does," broke in Jane Coop. "And I firmly believe he's my
mistress's guardian angel."

"After you, Janie dear," said the girl, smiling fondly up at the plump maid
and tying a huge crimson bow round the neck of the long-suffering animal.

"What is he going as, Maris?"

"A gargle, miss," broke in the maid. "I think it's just fun on the part of
Miss Damaris, because nothing as solid as him,"—pointing of comb to
shamed dog—"could go as anything watery."

Damaris got to her feet.

"Let's go in to Marraine," she choked. "Gargoyle, my dear," she
whispered, "is what she meant—gargoyle. Do come along!"

The girls' happy laughter rang down the corridor as they knocked at her
grace's door.

She stood at her dressing-table in a beautiful dress of grey brocade.
Diamonds sparkled in the laces of her corsage, on her fingers and in the
buckles of her lovely shoes; a big bunch of pink carnations was tied on the
top of her ebony stick; a priceless lace veil fastened over her head by a
fragile wreath of diamond leaves fell almost to the hem of her dress behind.
She had discarded the terrifying perruque, and her own hair, snowy-white,
was puffed and curled about the little face, which was finely powdered and
slightly rouged. She was a dream of beautiful old age, with Dekko just
visible under a huge pink bow upon her shoulder.

"May I present a very old woman to youth?" she said simply.

"Darling," cried Damaris as she ran forward and, pushing the yashmak to
one side, kissed the jewelled hand. "You are too beautiful—too beautiful!
Promise me never, never, never to wear it again."

"I'm too old to get rid of bad habits, chérie," said her godmother.
"And we had better go down. By the way, what is Ben coming as?"

"I really don't know," came the muffled reply from behind the yashmak,
"if he comes at all."

As Cairo entire had accepted the invitation, the place was packed, but
nowhere was the crowd so suffocating as round the entrance to the Winter
Garden.

"Per-fect-ly wonderful," gasped a rotund Ouled Nail to a masked dancer
of the same sex and size. "He told me about that terrible time when I lost so
much at bridge—you remember, dear, when I had to—er—to raise money
on my diamonds. How could he have seen it in my hand?"

He hadn't; he had been a guest at Hurdley Castle with her.

"What's he like?"

"Oh, I couldn't see his face, on account of the handkerchief thing, but I
think he's quite common; his clothes are quite poor. I believe he is one of
the waiters dressed up. I seem to recognise his voice. Have you long to
wait?"

"I'm twenty-fifth down the list. Who's in now?"

"Some woman in black. There are four of them, and I can't tell t'other
from which."

The hand of the woman who was twenty-fifth down the list was never
told.

Damaris lifted the curtain, and walked into the corner of the Winter
Garden, which had been temporarily given the appearance of an Arab's tent.

"Salaam aley," she said gently, giving the word of peace.

The fortune-teller salaamed with hands to forehead, mouth and heart, in
the beautiful Eastern gesture.

"Aleykoum es-Salaam!" he replied as gently, which is the sacrament of
lips.

There was the fortune-teller's regulation small table, with a chart of the
stars and a silver tray covered in sand upon it; on either side was a chair;
but it was upon a cushion on the floor that Damaris seated herself, with her
back against the canvas drapery of the wall, motioning the Arab to a
cushion near her, whilst her eyes swept the loose cotton tunic, the kaleelyah
or head-kerchief, which almost completely hid the face, the great white
mantle and the sandals upon the naked feet.

Oh! the game of make-believe they played, those two with the jewel-
hilted, razor-edged dagger of love between them.

There fell a silence.

And then the fortune-teller spoke in his own tongue, and too absorbed
were they in the game of make-believe to notice that he made use of neither

sand nor stars nor the lines upon her hands, which were clasped above her
heart, as he read her future in her eyes.

"Two paths lie before thee, O woman, and both stretch, through the
kingdom of love.

"The one to thy right hand has been marked out upon the Field of
Content by feet bound in the sandals of custom and convention. There is
shade upon this path, for, behold, the scorching sun of passion may not
penetrate the leaves of the trees of tranquillity; the storm breaks not, neither
do the biting winds of fear, nor the drenching torrents of desire, encompass
those who walk thereon.

"The river, the slow, full-blossomed river of patience, flows ever beside
it, on its way to the Ocean of Life in which all waters must mingle in
eternity."

There fell a silence, broken by the swaying, throbbing music from the
distant ball-room, causing the girl suddenly to stretch out her hands, upon
which shone the ring, and the man to stretch out his, though he touched not
hers at all.

"And to the left?"

"To the left, O woman whose eyes are like unto the pools of Lebanon at
night, to thy left, lies the desert. The desert, where the feet are blistered by
the gritting sands of passion and the eyes are blinded in desire. The vast
plain where knowledge walks hand-in-hand with death; where the footprints
of horror, fear, starvation, thirst, which are but the footprints of jealousy and
love desired and fulfilled, mark the sands for one little second and then are
gone; the desert, where there is no shade, no cool waters, no content, no

peace until the wanderer lies still, with sightless eyes turned towards
Eternity."

"And if a woman's feet trod upon it?"

"Then will she cut her feet upon the stones of pain; then will the scorpion
of bitter experience sting her heel; then will she die with a smile upon her
red mouth, for love will have come to her, maybe for a day, maybe for a
second of time, but a love which will mingle her soul with the soul of her
desert lover, or shatter her body, even as is broken the alabaster vase of
sweet perfume. Yet is it the love of the soul that endureth forever, yea, even
if the body of the woman passeth unto another's keeping."

The girl pulled her veil closely about her head and sat quite still, her
wonderful eyes hidden by the fringe of black lashes.

And yet did she not move when he sprang to his feet, intoxicated with the
mystery of her, afire with that love which is the heritage of the desert.

Then he bent and caught her by the wrists and raised her to her feet.

"Take the path at thy right hand, woman; set not a foot upon the desert
sand, lest perchance a bird of prey swoop down upon thee, thou white
dove."

He pulled her hands up, holding them cruelly, as in a steel vise, so that he
had but to bend a finger's breadth to kiss them.

"Thy feet hesitate, woman. Why? What searchest thou?"

"Knowledge."

The man unconsciously laced his fingers in hers, crushing them until she
went white to the lips.

"Knowledge is pain, woman. What know'st thou of pain? Great pain.
How could'st thou endure it?"

Then he let her hands go and touched the silver tray of sand upon the
table beside him.

"Behold! Love shall be offered thee within the passing of a few hours,
the love of thy right hand, and thou shalt reject it. Searching for that which
thou desirest thou shalt, surrounded by thy women who love thee, pass
down the river even unto Thebes of the Hundred Gates. Yet shalt thou not
find it in the river, nor in the temples upon the east bank of the waters, nor
upon the west bank."

Drawing a square in the sand, the fortune-teller made a cross at the south-
east, upon which, to see it better, the girl drew close—so close that the
sweet perfume of her veils filled his nostrils.

"Then shalt thou, in thy search, go, even under the stars, to the Gate of
Tomorrow, and there shall thou find a mare descended from the mares of
Mohammed, the Prophet of Allah the one and only God. White is the mare,
and beautiful, yea, even is she like unto thee, thou woman of ivory; her bit
is of silver, her bridle of plaited gold, her saddle-cloth encrusted with
jewels. Thou wilt spring upon her, and she, knowing her way, will bring
thee to the Tents of Purple and Gold."

"Ah!" whispered the girl. "The Tents of the long-dead Queen! They are
the talk of Cairo, but nobody—at least, no foreigner—has seen them."

"No man but the servants, no woman but the mother of him who is the
master, has even set foot within the Tents of Purple and of Gold; no one but
the master has set foot in the tent which stands between them, the Tent of
Death."

"And in them—if I come, what—what should I find?"

"No harm shall befall thee, no smirching of thy fair name. The master
alone shall greet thee, and when thou hast found that for which thou
searchest, then shalt thou return, if so thou wilt."

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

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

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

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

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

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

She only spoke to gain time.

Knowing that outside the curtain there stretched the path across the Field
of Content, she deliberately placed her foot upon the desert sand, and whilst

common sense urged her to get out of the room, she listened to temptation
and lingered, throwing safety to the four winds, opening wide her arms to
danger.

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

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

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

The girl put out her hand towards the silken curtain.

"How do you know who I am?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

She put out her hands and turned them down.

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

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

The girl held out her hand.

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

"Nay, give it thou to me."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What is an amulet of the heart?"

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IX

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

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, the blessed little ignoramus!

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

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

But Damaris, just as stubbornly, shook her head.

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

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

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

A wearisome process, but well worth while once in a lifetime, whatever
kind of a clutter those first cousins, obstinacy, stubbornness and strong will

cause you to accumulate about your feet at other times.

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

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

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

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

"Then explain this to me."

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

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

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

Then had been granted a seventh-heaven glimpse of what love, real love,
can be, to the tweeny maid, changing her into a veritable spitfire, who had

turned and rent the fox-faced youth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Without asking any explanation?"

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

"And you would forgive me?"

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

Then he blundered.

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

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

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

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

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

"What are you going to do?"

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

heels. You will learn all right, dear, and suffer a bit, dear, but you will come
to me in the end.

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

A troupe of riotous guests came streaming down the path.

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

The two walked slowly towards them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes?" she said courteously.

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

"My son, behold. I am near the sunset, the moment approaches when my
tired feet will advance still further upon the bridge which leadeth me to my
God and your God. What is past I know; what is, is; what is to be, is so near

that, behold, sometimes in the stillness of the night I hear the angels
whispering as they take counsel as to the moment when, one shall tap me
upon the shoulder, saying, 'Come!'"

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

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

The fortune-teller looked her straight in the face.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And she kissed him upon the forehead, whilst the tears stood in her eyes,
and turned towards the house, without noticing a man and a woman sitting

in the shadows at the far side of the grounds.

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

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

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

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

And he uttered a cry of astonishment.

Zulannah had lifted her veil.

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

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

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

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

"Am I not beautiful?" she added.

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

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

But what will you?

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

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

And we looking as the majority of us do look!

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

But Kelham looked up, looked long, and smiled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

They were half-starved.

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

So that, to feed his numerous progeny of repulsive simian shape, the
keeper of the cages starved the beasts. Not that Zulannah cared one iota for

their hunger or suffering; it made them fight the merrier for a bit of meat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER X

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

SIR LEWIS MORRIS.

The desert stretched before Damaris.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where is there anything to compare to riding across the desert at dawn?
At dawn, when to your right and to your left march phalanxes of ghostly
shapes, which maybe are the shadows of the night, or maybe, as says the

legend, the ghosts of the many long-dead kingdoms buried in oblivion and
the relentless sands; when the whistling of the wind is as the shouting of
men and the thunder of your horse's hoofs as the rolling of many drums,
calling you through the power of past centuries and the ecstasy of the
solitude in your heart, out to the mystery of the plains.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

El-Sooltan, connecting the sayis with the bucketsful of water he stood so
badly in need of, stopped short, nearly unseating Damaris with the

suddenness of his decision and then with the hand of the groom upon his
heaving flank trotted docilely back to the Obelisk, where Wellington,
risking curvature of the spine, turned himself into a canine picture of
ecstatic welcome.

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XI

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

SHAKESPEARE.

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

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

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

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

She was his at dawn in the desert, although miles of sand stretched
between them; his in the rush of the wind, the glory of the sky and the

thunder of the horses' hoofs; but to whom did she turn at night; in the maze
of the dance; the hothouse atmosphere of the hotel; the crush of the winter
visitors?

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

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

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

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

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

Later, as he sat alone in a far corner of the ball-room, he twisted the
dagger of love this way and that in his tormented heart, whilst the dogs of
Billi worried the life out of the hall-porter as they fretted and moaned for

their master who tarried. He had never danced, himself, loathing the idea of
the propinquity of a stranger's body so close to his own; of a stranger's
mouth so near his own; of the animal odour of the naked body, which no
perfume can hide, within his nostrils; just as he loathed the idea of a woman
passing from one man's arms to another's throughout the best part of a
night.

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

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

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

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

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

But the answer to this protest came in little jeering laughs and quick
remonstrance from those who feared that the whetting of their appetites
should be snatched from them, and a sigh of satisfaction went up when,

from the shadows, there sprang an Arabian youth, beautiful as a god, supple
as a snake, quick upon his feet as any fighting stallion.

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

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

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

But Hugh Carden Ali, standing under a palm, turned quickly when a little
sound of distress caught his ear, and put out his hand and pulled the girl he
had recognised in the dark by her perfume towards him, so that the back of
her head rested against his arm; and sensing her nausea at the sight from

which she had been trying to fly, and knowing the sheer impossibility of
keeping the eyes shut in a theatre, he pulled his handkerchief from his
sleeve and placed it across her eyes.

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

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

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

CHAPTER XII

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

OMAR KHAYYAM.

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

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

Having robed him, agog with curiosity and at a discreet distance, he
followed the resplendent figure in his satin raiment, snow-white turban

glistening with jewels and hooded falcon on wrist, and cursed the dogs
under his breath when they turned and growled softly. But his curiosity was
turned to a great amazement when his master passed into the court of the
empty, luxuriant, perfumed harem, where once had loved and quarrelled,
idled and fought, so many beautiful women.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She seemed to swing in the air like a lime flower caught on the end of a
spider's thread, as she came slowly down once more; to be blown hither and
thither like a leaf before the gale as she ran here, sprang there, to the rhythm
of the little tune she hummed behind the wisp of veil; to undulate, like a
field of ripe wheat beneath the summer sun as she stood quite near the man

who watched her with a fraction of the interest he would have shown in the
purchase of a dog or falcon in the open mart.

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

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

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

At last, and very slowly, and with a growing feeling of resentment in the
place where her heart by rights should have been, Zulannah sped down the

court upon her toes and fell at the edge of the piled cushions, causing the
dogs to growl softly at her daring.

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

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

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

"One hour!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Thou hast a great daring, woman."

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

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

"Speech? Wherefore?

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

"I love!"

"Thou!"

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

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

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

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

"Yea, I understand."

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

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

"Fearing to use force against the—the woman who thou sayest is loved
by the man thou lovest—and may the prophet bear witness that thy tale is as
full of turnings and twistings as the paths in the bazaar in which thou
spinn'st thy web—thou would'st tear her from him by craft. Explain thy

seemingly futile words, and hasten thy lying tongue, for behold the hour of
dawn approacheth."

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

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

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

"And———?" he whispered.

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

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

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

trafficker in foreign harlots, the———"

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

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

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

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

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

With falcon upon wrist and blood-stained dogs at his heels, he passed out
of the ill-fated court to his own apartment, and, having bathed and dressed

himself, to his body-servant's grief, in hot, European riding-kit, with boots
from Peter Yapp, tucked the cleansed dogs of Billi in beside him, and raced
his car to the Obelisk which is all that remains upright of the Biblical City
of On.

******

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

CHAPTER XIII

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

SIR LEWIS MORRIS.

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

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

Not for her own relief did she sit at rest, for in that way rest does not
come to us; but to the relieving of others by withdrawing from the lights

and noises of this tumultuous planet and so obtaining a better perspective of
things as they stand spiritually, and a clearer insight into the message of the
only book she considered worth studying and committing to memory.

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

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

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

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

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

She suddenly sat upright with a shiver.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damaris nodded.

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

The girl stopped for a moment, then continued:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIV

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

SHAKESPEARE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hugh Carden Ali bowed, to the saddle, as the great car shot smoothly
forward. There was a smile of welcome on the face of the old woman who
had loved his mother; a whole world of welcome in the outstretched hand
and a little feeling of thankfulness in her heart; that at last she might get to

know the man in time, and, with him, go to visit his mother, or, better still,
win his confidence, heal his hurt, and so obviate the tedious journey.

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XV.

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

SHAKESPEARE.

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

Hundreds of soft silken gowns; cushions of every hue; the great crimson
cover from off the divan—all of these he made into a huge bundle which he
carried to his den. The gold and jewelled toilet accessories, the silver basin

and ewer, just because they glittered, he tied in a pair of emerald green satin
curtains; various strange knives and things with prongs, with which on
certain occasions the courtesan had conveyed food to her mouth—she used
her fingers in private—with a jewel-encrusted nargileh of marvellous
workmanship, he rolled up in a bright yellow and green Kidderminster
carpet.

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

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

Then he gave a little click at the back of his throat, placed the mirror on
the floor and stole across the Persian carpet of an unknown antiquity and
value to a painted deal writing desk which had once reposed in a shop

window in Westbourne Grove; and which, on account of its little drawers
and little cupboards with painted doors, had given intense joy to the woman
whose wealth in hard cash in the bank and jewels in the safe was almost
incredible. He lifted the slanting lid, moved a bundle of papers fastened by
an elastic band, and pulled out a drawer out of which be took a cheque-
book.

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

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

He gave no thought to the dead body on the filthy straw; that he knew he
could carry under his arm and drop into the Nile when the bazaar slept; but

he pulled hard at his curly hair as a plan germinated in the sluggish
convolutions of his brain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then he suddenly stopped and stared into the glass.

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

Zulannah was not dead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XVI

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

SHELLEY.

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

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

Why did he deny himself?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

most unwarrantable manner beneath her coat.

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

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

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

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

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

Take heed!

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

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

Beasts see it not at all.

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XVII

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

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

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

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

Incidents of that kind do not occur in the great tourist centres—though
worse, far worse happens to the foolhardy or featherheaded in the by-paths
and hidden corners of this mysterious land—but if you have the vision, the
terrible silence of the Past, the supreme indifference of the great ruins to the
passage of Time, the wonderful repose of the mighty blocks of stone piled

in the days of the great Pharaohs, are apt to give a thrill to your heart and an
impression to your mind which may last a lifetime.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was no sound.

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

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

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

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

And as she sat there fell a little sound.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She spoke sweetly, softly, switching out the light.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They would have none of him, for beneath the mighty pinions showed
the white plumage of another race.

"And in the radiant light of day there came from the southern plains a
white bird, crossing the hawk's path as a snowflake driven by Destiny
across the desert wastes; and he encircled her, lifting her upon the wind of
his great pinions higher, higher yet towards the eyrie in the solitary
mountain peak.

"And as they mounted, those of his kind and those of her kind, who had
followed, battled with him, for he was outcast from the one and the other.
And the mist, which was the anger of the gods, closed down . . ."

The shadows seemed to deepen as the quiet voice stopped.

"And—" said Damaris gently, "—the end?"

"That is on the lap of the gods."

"I do not understand!"

She had not caught the end of Lady Thistleton's chatter, else would she
have been able to interpret the little story, and the man, who had thought
that his parents' mixed marriage was a common subject for gossip in the
hotel—which it was—sprang to his feet, The future still held the moment
when someone would enlighten her as to the lowliness of his caste.

"It is late," he said gravely in English. "Perhaps if you were to ask at the
hotel, someone would interpret the little tale. And now will you not return,

for fear they come in search of you? It is not wise to wander alone, at night,
without a companion. Your dog———?"

Damaris laughed, the echoes binding the silvery sound like a soft
wrapping about the wounds and bruises Time had left upon the ruins.

"Wellington? Oh, he cut his foot badly this morning. And I—I want to go
to the hall built like a tent."

"The great Festal Hall of Totmes III?"

The man made no other comment; it was not for him to offer himself as
dragoman.

"Will you—take me there, if you know the way?"

"Verily would I be thy guide," came the passionate reply, "to guard thy
feet against the stones which will surely be spread upon thy path."

Playing with fire! Yes, indeed!

Side by side they walked, the torch throwing a pool of radiance just
ahead, until Damaris walked blindly into a column and cried aloud from the
hurt of the stone against her shoulder.

It was then that she stretched out her hand for support, and tingled to her
feet when sudden flames seemed to singe her finger-tips as they rested on
the man's arm.

Through the Central Court and the Pylons and into the Hall of Records
they went, until she tripped and crashed to her knees, and, rising, slipped
her hand into the man's and stood for a moment with thudding heart when,
closing fiercely round hers, it seemed to burn her whole being.

Hand in hand they stood, seeing, by reason of the gloom, vastly little of
the columns which have the strange shape of tent-poles; then walked warily
and still hand in hand in and out of various and dilapidated chambers.

"I—I don't want to go back, but I think it must be very late, so———"

They were standing near the chapel with the granite altar as she spoke,
and had turned to retrace their way when she flashed her light upon a flight
of steps.

Strange is the fascination and desolation of steps leading to an empty
dwelling and almost as mysterious as the door ajar in an empty house.

She stood in the little room and swept the light across the walls upon
which are represented the animals and flowers brought from Syria century
upon century ago.

Then the light, which had been growing dimmer and dimmer, went out.

And it was the man this time who tackled the situation.

"I am your guide. I know the way in the dark."

He spoke in English as he swept the girl into his arms, carrying her like a
feather down the great temple where perchance he had held her against his
heart century upon century ago, even when the flowers and animals had
been brought from Syria.

"May I drive you home? I should love to," he said, as he placed her on
her feet near the car. He spoke in English, with an eagerness out of keeping
with the trivial request, and which was merely the expression of a desire to
be with her under commonplace circumstances.

"Please do. I don't think I could—I am so tired."

The gafir was accustomed to the strange habits of the white people, but,
although almost drunken with slumber, he peered closely and furtively at
the driver.

"Thank you so much," said Damaris gravely, with her hand against a
mark upon her cheek caused by the pressure of an amulet made of a scarab-
shaped emerald in a dull gold setting, and which Hugh Carden Ali wore
night and day above his heart. "Is there anything else as wonderful to see as
the Temple?"

"Deir el-Bahari."

The man spoke curtly and made no further comment; not for him was it
to offer himself as guide.

"Ah! yes, of course—but people go to it in crowds, and one has to follow
behind a guide in a procession."

"One is not obliged to return with the crowd, nor to listen to the
dragoman, who knows nothing about the incense-trees of Punt which were
planted upon the terrace to perfume the air under the light of the full moon,
in the days of Queen Hatshepu."

With apparent abruptness she ended the conversation:

"I share my godmother's great faith in you. Good night."

She put out her hand as he salaamed with hands to brow and lips and
heart. Perhaps that was why he failed to see it.

Or was it, perhaps, that he still felt the softness of her against his heart?

If you are dying of thirst, one drop of water will not assuage you!

CHAPTER XVIII

"A handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse."

I KINGS.

Whilst Damaris was trying to soothe her wounded pride at Karnak, Ben
Kelham was suffering the tortures of the nethermost pit down Assouan way.

His heart was not in "lion" at all, it was literally at Damaris' feet.

He had not rushed away in pique after her refusal of him on the night of
the fancy-dress ball; nor with any vague idea of causing her to regret her
decision in realising the vacuum, in her existence which his absence might
make. He had not an ounce of subtlety or vanity in his nature. He had gone
because he thought it would be the decent thing to do as far as she was
concerned, and also to hide his hurt and disappointment, which were deep.
The rumour of lion was genuine and the excitement, extending far down the
Nile, intense. In fact, with the aid of the Oriental's prodigal imagination the
one royal beast of feminine persuasion which was reported as having been
seen prowling around Deir el-Bahari had been multiplied to two pairs
ravaging the outskirts of Assouan.

He sat drinking coffee with jolly Sybil Sidmouth and her nerve-stricken
stepmother in the lounge of the Savoy Hotel in Assouan just at the moment

when Damaris sat herself down on the broken column in the Hypostyle
Hall.

"Jolly bad luck we've had, haven't we?" said Sybil.

Kelham nodded his head. The last post had come in, with nothing for him
but a few letters from home.

"Yes, rotten!" he replied after a moment. "She might have sent me a line."

Sybil's stepmother moved restlessly in her chair.

Ridden with nerves, she was also mother of twin-daughters neurotic and
plain who, sered by nature and yellowed by time and on the wrong side of
the matrimonial hedge, had been only too glad to foist her on to the plump
shoulders of jolly, capable, pretty Sybil and to get rid of them both for the
winter.

In the last week or so a sprouting of hope had pierced the matchmaking
soil in the querulous lady's really well-intentioned heart, for, like the
proverbial half-loaf, a step-son-in-law is distinctly better than none at all.

But Sybil only smiled at the absent-mindedness of the young man's
remark.

For weeks she had been the recipient of his confidences. He had dragged
her, suffocating, down into the mud-depths of the diffidence in which he
wallowed; had tugged her, gasping, to the Olympian heights from which he
viewed a world of love, all rosy-red; had flung her, well-nigh senseless
from exhaustion, upon the saw-teethed rocks of despair; and had taken her
paddling in the wash of his vapourings.

She was absolutely heart-whole, with a firm belief in the "lion" rumour,
and later, long after the end of this story, became the jolly, popular wife of
the great eye-specialist to whom she had rushed when, after a soul-shaking
scene with her step-sisters, she had missed the target entirely at Bisley.

As it happened, the duchess had written, but in a moment of most
unusual aberration had put Khartoum on the envelope instead of Assouan,
so that it was months, long after the end of this story, that the letter reached
him. Strange is it how the lives of men are wrecked or made through the
most trivial happenings.

The grain of dust in the eye; the mudbank in the river; the hen in the
road! Just think of the outcome of such insignificant incidents.

The last letter he had received had been written in Heliopolis on the eve
of her grace's sudden decision; the one that had gone astray had been mailed
in Luxor, and had contained the request that, when he had shot the lion he
would take the carcase or the skin as a present to Damaris at the Winter
Palace Hotel and wait there until her return from the Oasis of Khargegh.

There was no doubt about the fact that he was genuinely in love.

Lion or no lion in the vicinity, he would sit dreaming for hours amongst
the rock tombs at full noon or fall of evening or by the light of the sickle-
moon; a perfectly absurd proceeding where big game is concerned. Food or
sleep meant nothing to him, so that his usual good-temper was sharpened
and his undoubted good looks enchanced by a certain romantic gauntness
under the cheek-bone. People seemed as ghosts to him, so absorbed was he
in his love and his pain; so that his act of rising when Mrs. Sidmouth took
what she thought to be a diplomatic departure was purely mechanical.

Then Sybil laughed, a jolly, ringing laugh, and laid her hand upon his
arm.

"Why don't you run up to Heliopolis?"

"By jove, Sybil, that's an idea. You come along, too. Damaris would love
to meet you; you're just her sort. Besides, there's nothing doing in lion here,
it's only a yarn. Let's pack to-night and get off to-morrow. I'll go and see if
we can get a private steamer—can't stick a public one, stopping every other
minute to look at tombs!"

Sybil laughed.

"We'll go, Ben, it will be ripping. But to-morrow! How exactly like a
man!"

Ben was contrite. He thought Sybil travelled with a kit-bag and her guns;
he had forgotten Mamma.

Mamma protested. She was an invalid, with all an invalid's paraphernalia.

They started after the passing of a week in which Mrs. Sidmouth had a
series of nerve-storms, and in which Sybil, to pass the time, wrote a four-
page letter to Ellen Thistleton, which she duly received at breakfast.

They certainly did not stop en route to look at temples or tombs, but they
made quite a long halt on the sandbank just above Luxor, onto which boats
of all sizes and shapes so often run. The loss of time is irritating enough,
goodness knows, in ordinary travelling and occurs quite frequently, but
when one is love-driven and this maddening delay happens, then you have
to make as big an exercise of self-control as when you rush onto the
platform only to see the guard's van of your train disappearing into the
tunnel.

And surely the gods laughed long and loud when Damaris chose that
very day to return by public steamer from Denderah where she had been to
visit the Temple of Hathor the Egyptian Aphrodite.

CHAPTER SIX

"But still his tongue ran on, the less Of weight it bore, with greater
ease."

BUTLER.

Lady Thistleton's daughters were exhaustively energetic. It belied their
colouring, which was dun and which, though of the same family, is distinct
from mousey. It has infinitely more vim and a vast endurance and a great
patience; also is it sullen and boring, but reliable.

Ellen, the elder, had been engaged to a younger son of The Inverness of
Inverness. His colouring, except of course for the eyes, which were of a
snapping blue, reminded one of a tomato salad dressed with chilis and
smothered in mustard-sauce. His temper corresponded. They had fought
over everything until they had smashed their engagement.

Berenice was engaged to a parson in Edinburgh, one of the Smythe-
Smythes of London. She made a doormat of herself, loving the herculean
minister, and, though longing to stay at home and get married, had, at her
lover's earnest request, consented to accompany her mother and sister to
Egypt instead.

To his fervent mind the loss of a few months of married life would be
compensated for by the biblical discourses upon the Land of Moses with
which, later on, as his wife, she would be able to enliven Mother's
Meetings.

They admired Damaris a lot, though her independence and colouring
shocked them not a little. In the seclusion of the double bedroom, as they
brushed or twisted their lanky locks in Hindes', they whispered about her
love-affair, which had presumably gone agley, and thrilled with a distinct
feeling of wrong-doing over the gossip anent the mythical Sheikh.

If they had asked Damaris about the myth, she would have told them
everything quite simply and truthfully. This would have cleared up the mist
but spoilt the feeling of wrong-doing.

Lady Thistleton was large and recumbent and averse to sight-seeing, but
after a heart-to-heart talk with her daughters had seen to it that Damaris had
no time for moping.

Damaris went here, there and everywhere; played tennis; paid duty-calls,
as you must when somebody extends her wing-feathers as shelter; acted in
charades; attended concerts; and was thoroughly miserable.

Jane Coop was miserable too; so was the bulldog, and, through a certain
unconfessed and indefinable vigilance they both felt called upon to exercise
in behalf of their beloved mistress, were distinctly nervy.

"Drat the men!" had said the maid, giving pithy verbal expression to the
ragged state of her nerves as she cut the stalks of the beautiful flowers
which came daily without name or message. The dog's method of
expressing himself was somewhat more violent; it consisted of the sudden

seizure between his great teeth of the posterior portion of the nether
garments of low-caste males, white or coloured.

You could almost tell the status of the male bipeds by casting a discreet
eye upon their raiment, and as there was not a muzzle in Egypt big enough
to fit the dog, it had ended in him being led or chained in polite society.

Damaris's table was next that of the Thistletons, who, with a vague
memory maybe of their duty towards their neighbour as instilled on
Sundays into their rebellious infantile heads, chatted brightly to right and to
left of them at meals.

Full of the milk of human kindness, they allowed it to overflow into their
writhing neighbours' jugs.

They broke through the glacial atmosphere which surrounds the
Britisher's breakfast-table; newspaper propped against jam-pot was no
barrier; their gladsome invitations or suggestions, dammed for the moment,
would rise at last level with the paper's edge to trickle down the other side
and mingle with the eggs and bacon, porridge, kidneys, or whatever trifle
the plate might contain.

They read out scraps of news from the morning paper; they read out bits
of home news from their stacks of correspondence, written for the most part
on eight pages and in the sprawling, uncontrolled script of the woman who
has nothing but trivialities with which to fill her day.

Their blood was blue, their upbringing beyond suspicion; they simply
erred through a too-generous supply of the above-mentioned philanthropic
fluid.

They had come home dead-beat the night before, but were first down to
breakfast, as happy as could be at the thought of the strenuous day before
them, and were ostentatiously comparing their books of notes or jottings
when Damaris came in. They went everywhere with note-books in their
hands, and made entries at the most inconvenient moments during their
journey. To you or me they would have seemed but jottings, but Berenice
could have read you a blank-verse love-poem in the thick markings of her
fountain-pen; and Ellen a De Profundis from the hieroglyphics and
inscriptions copied by her scratchy stylo and under which she essayed to
bury the memory of the tomato-hued Inverness.

Damaris slid into her seat with an inward prayer that she might be
allowed time to read her mail, which consisted of a fat letter from her
godmother and a bulky one from home. "Perhaps Marraine will be back
soon," she thought, opening the other letter first, as is a way with us
perverse humans. Enclosed was an atrociously-written letter to her mother
from her plain-as-a-pikestaff brother, written from Harrow.

". . . it's awfully jolly," wrote the enthusiastic youngster, "being in Ben
Kelham's house. They still talk about his last house-match against Bumbles.
Don't you remember I'd just got over mumps and we went down for it?
Bumbles had six to win and ten minutes to do it in when Howard was
bowled, and Carden, their captain, went in and drove right over the Pav. He
won the match by one, don't you remember? And then Kelham caught him
magnificently in the slips just as time was up."

Damaris looked at a bunch of jasmine lying beside her plate, and sighed
as she opened her godmother's letter; then sighed again, more profoundly.

The duchess had arrived at Khargegh without mishap. She described the
journey, gradually ascending through the desert, then down through the
narrow valley of rocks—the wastes of rock and gravel—the beautiful valley

—the great plain to Mahariq-Khargegh with its date-palms, its filthy lanes,
its mosques, with the limestone hills almost surrounding it.

"And we can't get any further, my dear. A report has come of the
appearance near here of a notorious robber gang which has infested the
desert farther south for years. I don't believe it myself—Hobson is furious,
as the hotel we are in is not totally devoid of—shall I call them mosquitoes?
—but the authorities refuse to allow us to proceed. I have sent a runner
through to the friend I was going to see."—Damaris touched the jasmine at
her side and sighed. "I will tell you the whole history when I return. So sad,
my child; so very tragic. She may come to see me, as the authorities have
no power over her. She is staying at her eldest son's house until his return. I
will let you know my movements as soon as I can. Enjoy yourself. Dekko is
very quiet; he is either apprehensive or going to moult."

Damaris smiled spasmodically when, as she put the letter down under the
jasmine, her neighbours let off a broadside.

The head dragoman wanted to get up a party for Deir el-Bahari on the
morrow. He had twenty pairs of donkeys, all of which were so accustomed,
it seemed, to going about in a bunch that they refused to move a step if one
pair was missing. Nineteen pairs had been filled from the different hotels,
one pair was still minus riders. Would Damaris make a couple with Mr.
Lumlough?

Mr. Lumlough, who was of the raw age of nineteen and who worshipped
in secret at the girl's shrine, blushed divinely salmon-pink and coughed.

Damaris shook her head.

She longed to see the Temple, as she longed to go to Denderah, but not in
a crowd; also, she longed to confide all her secrets (of which her visit to the

Temple of Amnon was not one of the least) to her godmother. She was just
the slightest bit scared, and, being very young, felt incapable of prescribing
for her burnt finger-tips.

She had only to keep away from the fire, but, as I have already said, she
was very young.

"Do, Damaris! We are taking our lunch on donkeys, as well."

"But why not let the empty pair go without riders? Or let Mr. Lumlough
go on one and let the other trot by its side without anyone? I'm sure it would
love a holiday."

No! These twenty pairs of donkeys belonged to an asinine Trades Union.
The twenty pairs went together or not at all; they went up the steep hill with
a human being on their backs or not at all; if one solitary moke out of the
forty trades-unionists should be asked to climb a hill with nothing on its
back, it would not move one step—no, not if the most luscious carrot feast
awaited it at the top; and if it refused to budge, the thirty-nine others would
support it by also refusing to budge! Yes! even if they held up the whole of
the tourist season for eternity and never again tasted luscious carrot in all
the years allotted to the asinine race. What is the good of customs if you
don't stick to them? The donkeys' parents had always climbed that hill
heavily-laden, and what was good enough for them was also good enough
for their descendants!

"I think it's horrid of you, Damaris. Besides, what are you going to do all
by yourself?" said Ellen, opening a letter bits of which she proceeded to
read out. "Here's a letter from Sybil Sidmouth. She and Mr. Kelham are
having a very poor time sitting about in the rocks and tombs all day and half
the night."

"How romantic!" sighed Berenice. "All alone with Nature in an Egyptian
desert! It reminds me of Omar's Jug and Loaf verse. How does it go?" She
flipped through her notebook. "Ah! here it is." And she proceeded to read,
with appropriate punctuation with her tea-spoon on the edge of her saucer:

"A book of verses underneath the bough
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and Thou
Beside me, singing in the wilderness;
O, wilderness were Paradise enow!"

She looked up, suddenly, surprised and indignant, at Ellen, who had
kicked her violently under the table; then she tried to cover up her
confusion at her unfortunate faux pas.

"Mrs. Sidmouth, of course, is far from well," she continued. But Ellen
broke in, in her high staccato and appalling French:

"Revenons à nos moutons—or at least, our donkeys." She looked at
Damaris, who, with over-bright eyes, laughed whole-heartedly at the feeble
joke. "Do change your mind, Damaris. The guide is Yussuf, the very best,
you know. Besides, we might see the lion."

"All right," said Damaris, tucking the jasmine into the belt of her white
dress, which she had never done before. "I'll come. Twenty pairs of donkeys
climbing up a hill will be an awfully funny sight,—don't you think so, Mr.
Lumlough?"

She smiled across at Mr. Lumlough, who was thereupon transported to
the portals of the seventh heaven with a piece of toast and marmalade in his
right hand.

CHAPTER XX

"I was never less alone than when by myself."

GIBBON.

Next morning, with her chaperon's energetic daughters, Damaris found
herself one of the herd foregathered on the Nile bank preparatory to the
excursion to the Valley of the Kings, and later in the afternoon by mountain
path over the ridge to that marvel of antiquity the Terrace-Temple of Deir
el-Bahari.

"I don't want to go, Janie dear," she said, the preceding night, whilst the
devoted maid wielded strong-bristled brushes on the burnished short-
cropped hair.

"Better go, dearie. One must be polite, even if the heart breaks."

Jane Coop's literary plane swung between a three-penny weekly entitled
"Real Stories from High Life" and Ouida's novels, which latter she had
bought second-hand in the Charing Cross Road and kept sandwiched
between her Bible and "Grandmother's Herb Recipes."

"But I don't want to go. I hate crowds, and I can't take Wellington. Every
native flies from him since he got behind the Musical Colossus and

growled. You remember? They thought it was the statue speaking, and the
dear old darling was only trying to catch a lizard."

The bulldog loathed Egypt.

He was always either in disgrace or being talked to in baby language. He
had seen next to nothing of his beloved mistress, and his digestion had been
almost ruined by the amount of chocolates he had eaten out of pure
boredom.

"Take me," he said, every time his beloved went out, as plainly as could
be by means of his beautiful face and down-cast tail. But excursions had
grown rarer and rarer and his slender middle more and more defined
through grief.

"My heart isn't breaking, Janie!" Damaris declared, sitting up in bed.

"I know it isn't, dearie. There's nothing to break it over, I'm sure. I was
just repeating from 'Her Scarlet Sin', where the beautiful heroine is torn
between two stools as it were."

Jane Coop had no use for knights who left the field of combat; and as for
the tales which were duly carried to her of an Arabian chief who followed
her young mistress in the desert and sent her bunches of flowers and such-
like trash, well! it was all you could expect if you left your own country for
heathen parts!

To Jane Coop, rides in the desert in Egypt were just as much a part of the
day's programme as rides on donkeys at holiday-time had been in Margate,
before interfering people began to make a fuss about the rider's weight.

"You mind your own hedges, Maria Hobson, and see that your own cattle
don't go a-straying, with their monkey tricks," she had said tartly and not

over-lucidly, to her grace's maid, who had heard from someone who had
heard from someone else that Miss Hethencourt was out at all hours of the
night, here, there and everywhere. "I know what time she comes in and
where she has been, and who with, and that's quite enough for me. Thank
you, I can shepherd my own flock!"

She was not exactly within the confines of truth in her statement, but
having learned in her youth to diagnose the hurt of dumb animals, she felt
she was fully qualified to treat her beloved child's unrest without any verbal
aid from outsiders.

Yet something, a warning from the future, maybe, had prompted her to
speak this night as she stood beside the bed, looking down upon the beauty
of the child to whom she seemed, more than anyone else, to stand in the
position of sponsor.

"Will you promise me one thing, dearie?"

She stroked the red head lovingly as it leant against the motherly bosom
upon which had so often rested errant lambs and stricken pullets.

"Yes, Janie darling. I would promise you anything!"

"I know things are going crosswise a bit with you, dearie, as they always
do in an unknown country; but I don't worry about that, because at the
crossways there is always a signpost. But now that we are in this heathen
land, I want your promise that you will always tell me where you are going
to when you go out—always. If it's out for a ride in the desert or over
amongst them mummy-tombs, or out to a tennis-party or dance. Will you,
dearie? Always?"

The insistence in the demand made the girl look up into the homely face
and she did not smile as she made a little cross above her heart in the
manner of children.

"I promise, Janie—cross heart. And I'm starting out early-early to-
morrow morning on an excursion to the Tombs of the Kings. We are taking
lunch with us—paper-bags and remnants of sandwiches amongst Egypt's
dead—tea at the Rest House and———"

She stopped for a minute, then continued slowly:

"———and if I don't come back with the rest, Janie dear, don't worry. It's
full moon, and I may stay to see the Temple by moonlight."

A moment's silence; then said practical Jane:

"And as you can't take Wellington, dearie, will you promise to take your
revolver? You know, they say lions have been seen in———"

Damaris laughed.

"They've left, Janie! They're all at Assouan, waiting to be shot by
Mr. Kelham and Miss Sidmouth."

Jane Coop sniffed as she tucked in the bed-clothes and kissed her child
good-night.

She had got to the door when Damaris spoke.

"Janie, you know all about birds, don't you?"

"Hens, dearie."

"Well!" The girl's voice came muffled, as though she had drawn the sheet
about her face. "Supposing a hawk———"

"Hawks aren't hens, dearie."

"Well—hens! Supposing you had a breed of hens that were all—all—oh!
any colour———"

"White Leghorns," said Jane Coop, who was beginning to get interested
in this subject so near her heart.

"Yes. Well, supposing you found that one, when it had all its feathers, had
some speckled ones under its wings——"

"But it couldn't, dearie, if it was pure-bred!"

"Yes, but just supposing it had, what would be the meaning of it?"

Jane Coop hesitated, and re-tied her apron-strings. Descriptive analysis
was not her strong forte.

"Well, dearie, I should say that the male bird was a—a—oh! a Plymouth
Rock, or something like that. The speckled bird would be a good one, but if
it was mixed it would have to be turned out of the run if you had a fancy for
showing and prizes. I remember a black—— But there now! what made
you start your old Nannie talking about hens? Just you turn over and go to
sleep, dearie. You have to be up and away early to-morrow, you know!"

She closed the door gently and left the girl alone.

"I don't understand," she said softly, and slipped out of bed to stand at the
open window, with all the glory of an Egyptian night before her.

"I don't understand the meaning of the story," she repeated, as she
watched the figure of a fellah wrapped in a big cloak which shone snow-
white under the moon, trudging patiently across the grounds to the servants'
quarters. Then, as the huge dog flung himself against her, she struck her
hands together. The sudden impact sent her mind flying back to the first
time she had seen Hugh Carden Ali, in English riding-kit and Mohammedan
tarbusch in the bazaar; then in her memory she saw him dining as an
Englishman; saw him riding with falcon upon fist—a very Eastern, saw him
as an Arab of Arabia in the desert; again as an Englishman, save for the
Mohammedan tarbusch, holding in the bay mare as she thundered past him
on the stallion Sooltan.

In a flash she understood the tragic story of the Hawk of Egypt.

"The pity of it!" she whispered. "Oh! the cruel pity of it!" and crept back
to bed.

******

Wide-eyed and quiet, she stood very early next morning with the jostling,
laughing crowd, waiting to be ferried across the Nile on the excursion to the
Tombs of the Kings, which to most of the crowd ranked on a level with
Madame Tussaud's Waxworks, with the difference that in the valley of
desolation you could leave the remnants of your lunch anywhere, which is a
habit strictly forbidden in the Marylebone Road.

Mounting the diminutive donkeys caused peals of laughter; the hamlets
of Naza'er-Rizkeh and Naza'el Ba'irait rang with the cries of the cavalcade,
and Damaris blindly followed Lady Thistleton's energetic offspring, as with
note-book and pencil they followed the guide in and out of the regulation
tombs of Biban el-Muluk, the history of which he repeated with parrot-like
monotony.

Lucy Jones, lighthearted tourist, thought the lunch awfully jolly in the
shade of the tomb, in fact, she made it a riotous feast, with the help of
others as young and non-temperamental as herself.

After all, what did it matter?

As Lucy said, "The dead had been such a jolly long time dead," and the
desolation of the valley made such a splendid contrast to the golden
sunshine and violent blue of the sky.

The zig-zag path down to Deir el-Bahari occasioned more laughter and
little screams and offers of help from the sterner male, who, under an
extreme insouciance, tried to hide the insecurity of his perch on the back of
the humble, scrambling quadruped.

When the laughing, jostling and somewhat dishevelled crowd streamed
back down the second incline and across the Central Terrace, en route for
the donkeys, it left Damaris standing with dancing eyes, and laughing
mouth under the blue and star-strewn ceiling of the Shrine.

And when the last sound of laughter, and clattering stone under nimble
hoof had melted away; when the sky had turned the marble temple mauve
and pink and deepest red, and back to pink, to mauve, to softest white;
when the first star had fastened the robe of day to the cloak of night, and
silence had fallen like balm upon the wound caused by raucous voices,
Damaris tip-toed down the steps and out into the Colonnade of Punt.

She was quite alone.

CHAPTER XXI

"No time so dark but through its woof there run Some blessed threads of
gold."

C. P. CRANACH.

It is difficult—no, it is impossible to describe the wonder of Deir el-
Bahari under the moon, just as it is impossible to describe "the light that
never was, on land or sea," or the Taj Mahal, or a mother's love.

To our eyes it is the picture of desolation. Just as it must have been a
picture of grandeur to those of the woman who built it, Queen Hatshepu,
sister, wife and queen of Totmes III.

It is built in terraces to which you climb by gentle incline; it is
surrounded and crossed by colonnades; there are ruined chapels and
vestibules and recesses; an altar upon which offerings had once been made
to the great gods; broken steps and closed and open doors, behind which the
ghosts of dead kings and queens, priests, priestesses and nobles sit in
ghostly council; through which they beckon you—if you belong.

There has surely come to each of us, in this short span we term life, the
moment when, just introduced, we look into another's face and say or think,
"We have met before."

May it not have been that we once met to burn incense together before
the dread god Anubis, or to make offerings upon the altar erected to the
great god Ra Hamarkhis; or was it perchance that you, if you are a woman,
once waited at the temple gates to see him pass upon his return from the
great expedition to the land of Punt, which we call Somaliland to-day?

Had the man with hawk-face who offers you a muffin or cup of tea to-
day once brought you gifts of ivory, or incense, or skin of panther from the
wonderland? Did he sweep the seething crowd with piercing eye to find the
face beloved, and pass on to the rolling of drums, the crash of cymbals, the
blaring of trumpets, to make obeisance to his monarch and return thanks to
the mighty gods?

Perchance!

But Damaris had no thought of the past as she stood amongst the pillars
of the colonnade which commemorate the great expedition; she was
enthralled with the hour, the solitude, the silence, as she hesitated,
wondering which way to go. Then, even as she hesitated, the silence was
broken by the distant throbbing of a drum.

It came from one of the villages far down the hill and, caught by the
evening breeze, was carried to the temple, to be multiplied a hundredfold in
the echoing roof.

All other sounds may cease way out in the East; birds may nest and
humans sleep; but the sound of the drum faileth never.

It is a message, a love-song, a lament, a prayer, and you hear it in the
desert as in the jungle, in the temple as in the courtyard behind the hovel.

It is not a wise thing to listen to its call, for it can lead you off the beaten
track, or over the precipice or out into the desert to die.

It caught the girl's feet in the witchery of its rhythm and set them moving
upon the sand-covered floor of the Temple. Yet there was no smile on her
lips as, moved by whatever it is that causes us to do strange things in the
East, she danced like a wraith or a sylph, or a leaf in the wind, in and out of
the columns and out into the light of the moon, and through the granite door
onto the terrace where once had been planted the incense trees which had
come with the spoil from Punt to perfume the air to the glory of Ra
Hamarkhis.

The rolling of the drum stopped short, and Damaris came to herself with
a start as she stood under the moon, then clasped her hands upon her
thudding heart as she watched a man with two great shaggy dogs walk
across the terrace towards her.

Save for the Mohammedan head-covering he was an Englishman, and he
spoke in his mother's tongue to the girl he loved and whom he had watched
since her arrival with the jostling, laughing crowd.

"The gods of the temple are good to me," he said simply. "I prayed that I
might watch you dance upon the incense terrace of their house; they have
answered my prayer. Come."

As they passed across the terrace to the hall of columns which is the
vestibule of the chapel of the god of Death, he told her how he had watched
and waited, meaning no discourtesy, until she should visit the temple
amongst the limestone hills.

"Where are we going?"

Damaris spoke more to break the spell which seemed to hold her than to
know the end of the walk across the sand. Bewitched by the moon and the
terrific power of old Egypt, she would have followed the man blindly,
fearing no hurt, even into the inner-most sanctuary which, hewn out of the
rock itself, lies at the extreme end of the temple.

"To the Shrine of Anubis the god of Death, where I would show you the
Hawk of Northern Egypt upon the wall."

They passed between the great columns and up the flight of steps to the
doorway beyond which lie the chambers of the Shrine, and there Hugh
Carden Ali took the girl's hand as he called her name aloud, until the walls
or the spirits of the gods thundered back the echo.

"The gods introduced the kings of Egypt to the sanctuary. Anubis god of
Death, as you will see by the painting upon the wall, led the great queen to
the door," he said in reply to a whispered question from Damaris. "I would
not that the shadow of death touched the hem of your raiment. I called your
name aloud so that the gods might hear. . . . Do I believe in such strange
things? How can one say, I believe, or do not believe, in this land which is
in the grip of a dead past which is not dead?"

And they passed in through the door and stood looking up at the Hawk of
Horus painted in the XVIII dynasty upon the wall.

Brilliant in colouring, green and white, with red-tipped wings, it spreads
them above the place where once was seen the painted picture of the queen
who reigned and suffered and died, thousands of years ago.

"Ah!" said Damaris, as she looked up to the corner. "It is your—your
crest—your———"

"It is a fantasy of mine. We trace my father's house right back without a
break to the days of the Pharaohs—so, I believe, does Mohammed Ali,
vendor of slippers in the bazaar." He paused, then added abruptly, with a
frown and a movement of the shoulders as though he were trying to shift a
burden, "If you will come with me to the inner chamber, if you are not
afraid, I will interpret the Story of the Hawk to you in the shadows where it
belongs."

Damaris put out her hand as though to speak, then passed into the inner
room, across the threshold of which the dogs of Billi laid themselves down.

"Death is around us," said Hugh Carden Ali. "Do you believe in omens?
—No? Nor I. I wish there was a seat, so that you could rest whilst I tell you
———"

Damaris laid her hand gently upon his arm, and he looked down into the
face shining dead-white in the reflection of the moon which had silted in
through a hole in the roof.

"You know?"

Damaris looked up and smiled.

"Yes! I know. And, being the son of such splendid people, I cannot
understand why———"

The gates of pain and love and sacrifice were opened and the girl shrank
back against the wall as the tide of pent-up bitterness swept around her in
the ruined shrine. The man's face was white, his eyes blazed in the agony of
his hurt, whilst the dogs lifted their heads and growled.

". . . You do not understand! You do not understand that I love you! And,
loving you, I stand a prisoner behind the bars wrought for me by the love of

my parents. That I love you as surely you never have been, never will be
loved, and that I dare not, can not ask you to be my wife,—even if you
loved me—which you do not. . . What? You do not see why I should not
marry into my mother's race even as my father did? I will tell you why." He
gripped her wrists and pulled her to him. "Because I am the outcome of
their union. My father is an Arab, my mother an Englishwoman. I—I am a
half-caste. I am nearer white, truly, than my father, but—but my son,
although he might be white or dark,—a—a native, as you say in England—
would only be a half-caste lying on your white breast, if you were my
wife."

The moonbeams lengthened as the man talked on, whilst Damaris learned
of one of love's bitterest mistakes.

"Oh, forgive me!" he ended. "Why did I bring you here to hurt you, to
make you cry for a pain which is not yours? Why are you left alone? It is so
dangerous in this land of my fathers. Your godmother deserts you whilst she
goes to my mother, who is afraid for me—ah! did you not know? The man
who loves you has left you to the wind of chance: my friend, Big Ben
Kelham—O gods of ancient Egypt, how you must laugh!—my friend! Shall
we meet again, I wonder?——"

Surely Anubis the god of death, Anubis the jackal-headed—who leads the
soul of the departed through the underworld into the presence of the great
Osiris—surely he moved upon the wall and turned to look after those two as
they passed out of the inner chamber to stand beneath the Hawk upon the
wall.

Or was it the shifting of the moon amongst the shadows?

"Will you"—there was no trace of the man's anguish in his voice: the
Mohammedan's resignation to the inevitable may seem a weak way out to

one who will kick and worry until he drops from exhaustion, but it saves a
great deal of pain to others—"will you—you must surely marry some day,
so beautiful, so sweet you are—will you let me give you this as a wedding-
present, and will you think of me, a prisoner, when you fasten it in your
wedding-gown?" He held out a jewel in the shape of the Hawk which
spread its wings upon the wall above them. "It was found here, in this
sanctuary—a priestly ornament? a pilgrim's offering? Who knows? Will
you?—I have no right to it, for beneath my wings is the plumage of another
race. I am not a pure-bred son of Northern Egypt."

"Will you pin it in?"

The girl's voice shook as she tilted back her chin so that her mouth was
on a level with the man's as he bent to fasten the jewel in the silk.

"Will you promise me one thing? Yes!—you are good to the prisoner.
Allah! how I love you, and surely, if I may not be your master I may serve
you. If you should be in trouble—ever—in this land of Egypt, the very soil
of which is drenched with the blood of those who have fought, and loved,
and won, and lost thousands of years before the coming of the gentle
prophet who said that in the sight of the great God, anyway, we are brethren
—yes, if trouble should come to you, will you send me a messenger—to the
Tents of Purple and of Gold? I am doing you a great wrong in lingering
where I can catch glimpses of you. I love you—love you—but that is no
excuse for causing you harm through the wagging of evil tongues."

Tears dropped one by one upon the jewel which glittered on her breast.

"And if I were in trouble—great trouble—if I were to come to you
myself, how——?"

"My boat waits at the landing-stage from sundown to sunrise, the swiftest
mare in all Egypt, as the fortune-teller foretold you, the snow-white mare
Pi-Kay waits from the setting until the rising of the sun at the Gate of To-
morrow, which is a ruined portal on the road of the Colossi. From there the
way lies west. And fear not." He pointed to an inscription on the wall and
translated it in the Egyptian tongue. "'I have come full of joy because of my
love to thee; my hands are full of all life and purity. I am protecting thee
among all gods.'"

Followed by the dogs, they walked slowly down the incline to a mound
of rubbish flung up and left by an excavating party many years back; behind
it they found the stallion Sooltan in the care of his sayis, also the one
donkey which had wandered off in search of grass and got lost, and whose
absence in the cavalcade had not been noticed on account of the disorder of
the descent.

"Kismet!" had said Jobad the guide when he had made the discovery at
the water's edge.

If the white folk could not keep count of themselves he was not going to
draw their attention to the fact that one of the party was missing; he had not
the slightest intention of providing an evening meal for the lion by offering
to go in search of the pair. "Kismet!—Allah would watch over them!"

Hugh Carden Ali leapt to the saddle without touching the stirrups, then
swung the girl as lightly as a leaf up into his arms.

Heedless of the extra burden of the slip of a girl who had mastered him in
the desert and who lay so quietly against his master's heart, the magnificent
black beast stood stock-still, then suddenly shivered violently, just as the
dogs of Billi, belly to ground, eyes blazing, ruffs on end, growled softly.

Hugh Carden pressed Damaris back against his shoulder and turned and
looked in the direction whence had come that sound, paralysing if you do
not happen to be armed.

From somewhere amongst the rocky wilderness of the hills, carried by
the night-breeze, had come the hoarse coughing of a lion.

"Listen," he said.

And as it came again, with shrieks of "Sabé! sabé!" the pea-green sayis
leapt on the back of the terrified donkey, which, spurred by fear,
disappeared like a streak down the hill just as the stallion, sweating with
pure terror, reared and wheeled, then backed, with great eyes rolling and
hoofs striking sparks from the stones.

Up he reared, until it seemed impossible that he should not fall
backwards, crushing to death or hideously maiming the man who,
encumbered with the girl upon his arm, could do little to calm the
frightened beast, And well for them was it that Hugh Carden Ali, with his
love and understanding of horses, knew that only to the sagacity of the
animal could the safe negotiation of the dangerous descent down the
hillside be left. He gave Sooltan his head.

There is no danger in it, goodness knows, when you bestride a diminutive
donkey whose dainty little feet know every pebble on the route, but there is
danger when an animal like Sooltan takes the Avenue of Sphinxes at a mad
rush and slips and slithers and slides, under the impetus of his own weight,
pace and terror, the rest of the way, even if he is as sure-footed as a goat.

******

Later, when her beloved child wakened the night-porter, Jane Coop, blue
with anxiety and cold, most unhygienically closed the window and
thankfully padded off to her comfortable bed.

CHAPTER XXII

"_Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that being nothing art
everything! . . . . The mighty future is as nothing, being everything! the
past is everything, being nothing!"

LAMB.

In spite of her tongue, which was somewhat unduly inclined to gossip,
Lady Thistleton was a motherly old soul and had a great affection for
Damaris.

". . . I should not like either of my little girls," she was saying the
morning after the visit to the Terrace Temple, "to visit the ruins or stay out
unchaperoned after dark. I am responsible for you, you know, dear, and you
are very beautiful and very young. Of course I know that you are a little
unhappy, dear, but other girls have been the same. So you must not worry.
Everything will come right. I expect you know all about my Ellen."
Damaris nodded. "And everybody is so fond of you. Would you like to have
a long day in bed to-day, dear, or go to Denderah with the girls? They are
thinking of staying for a few days."

Damaris smiled the radiant smile which made her so attractive, and,
rising, put her arms round the motherly old dear's neck and kissed her,

which was an unusual thing for her to do, as she was, as a rule,
undemonstrative to coldness.

"I'd love to go to Denderah, if I may take Janie and Wellington. And I'm
truly not worrying; it's just a tremendous spirit of adventure which drives
me to do these awful things."

So to Denderah she went, with her spirits at highest pitch at the thought
of getting away from Luxor for a few days and of seeing the wonderful
Temple of Hathor, the goddess of Joy and Youth.

She was in riotous spirits when she arrived at the Hotel Denderah in
Kulla, where the lovely porous jugs come from; in fact, so blithe was she
that Ellen, inclined to despondency and of a superstitious tendency,
remarked:

"I should calm myself a little, my dear Damaris; such gaiety can only
lead to depression, later on."

But Damaris only laughed.

How good it is that we cannot visualise beforehand the hour in which our
tears must flow and our hearts come well-nigh to breaking!

She laughed, she sang, she visited the town, and went to bed early. She
teased Jane Coop the next morning as, perilously perched on donkey-back,
she headed the little procession which wended its way through the stretches
of earth which later would give a harvest of corn and sweet-scented
flowering bean.

She urged the panting bulldog along the three good miles, and laughed at
him when, sneezing and coughing, he rubbed his great paws over his face,
covered with the cobwebs which floated on the air; but she stopped

laughing when she first caught sight of the great arch of crumbling antiquity
which is all that is left of the edifice upon the site of which the Temple of
Hathor was built; and she stood quite still in the over-powering colonnade,
whilst the Thistletons, notebooks in hand, rushed inside in the wake of the
guide. Jane Coop stopped dead at the outer edge of the colonnade.

"I thought you said it was a Temple of Love, dearie: all white marble,
with doves and lovers'-knots and—and hearts. It's a tomb, that's what it is,
and I'm going to sit outside. I don't like it; it bodes no good. Let's go back,
dearie; I don't like the place or the hotel or the town. If we go quickly we
can catch the first boat. Let the others stay if they want to. I'm thinking of
you; my heart's telling me that you must not stop, and that if you do, harm'll
come to you, or somebody."

Strange was the persistence of the usually placid woman, as she caught
her young mistress by the arm and quite violently shook her fist at the
sinister face of the goddess which shows on each side of the columns.

And strange it is to know that if the girl had but listened, the harm might
not have befallen.

But Damaris shook her head.

"We must be polite, Janie dear, even if we are dying to go home. Besides,
two or three days will do us good, and it will help pass the time until
Marraine comes back. Come, Well-Well."

The dog followed his mistress up to the door, but there he stopped.

"Come along, Well-Well," she repeated.

The dog sat down, with a definite air of ending further exploration as far
as ruins were concerned, on his part.

"I think you and Janie are bewitched to-day."

Damaris spoke petulantly and watched the dog waddle back and sit down
beside the maid, who, busy crocheting, sat on a stone some few yards from
the Temple, to which she had resolutely turned her back.

Damaris stood for a moment feeling as though the very wettest of wet
blankets had been wrapped round her; then turned, listened until she heard
Ellen's staccato voice coming from the direction of the antechamber in the
middle of the Temple, and tiptoed across to the east side, where are to be
found the ruined Treasury and Store Rooms in which were stored the
incense for sacrifice or offering, the vestments and banners and other such
props needful to the correct fulfilment of the rites of an ancient worship
which, as far as services go, in display of wealth and sense-stirring
accessories, did not differ so very much from what we see in some of our
churches in this present day of grace.

She came to the stairs, up which so many years ago the mother of Hugh
Carden Ali had climbed, on the day when she had fully realised that the
crown of love had come to her.

Damaris climbed them, and stood on the roof, watching, as had watched
Jill Carden, the clouds of twittering birds as they flew in the direction of the
Libyan Hills; then she crossed to the little shrine of Osiris, stood for a
moment unconsciously passing her finger over the carvings, turned as
though someone had called her, and ran down the stairs.

She stood and listened until she heard Ellen's voice looming from the
side chapel on the western side, then, and just as though pulled by some
invisible hand, she passed quietly through the antechamber into the
sanctuary where, in the days of Ancient Egypt, the mighty Pharaoh, and he
only, entered to commune with the gods at the birth of the new year; and

where the mother of Hugh Carden Ali, stricken with the glory of the secret
revealed, had fallen unconscious to the ground, over twenty years ago.

She stood quite still, her heart beating to suffocation; then she raised her
hand and pushed the hair from her forehead.

"I feel just as though the roof was pressing down upon me," she
whispered to herself. "As though, through me, something awful was going
to happen. I——"

She turned, and almost ran out of the sanctuary, her footsteps waking the
echoes of the roof which once had resounded to the clash of cymbal, the roll
of drum and blare of trumpets. She heard Ellen's strident voice calling to
her, telling her to come and join them in the crypts; she paid no heed, she
ran on and out into the sunshine and down to the maid, who was still
placidly crocheting.

And as she left the ruin, the mantle of depression fell from her, and she
laughed as she caught the great dog and forced him to walk upon his hind-
legs.

"No, Janie," she said that night, as the maid tucked her up in bed. "Here I
stay until I have visited the Temple thoroughly, and I'll take you down into
the creepy crypts and lock you in them if you worry any more. We all got
up too early and hadn't had enough breakfast—that is why we disliked the
place so much."

They stayed some days, and then took the public steamer home, Damaris
bubbling over with high infectious spirits, which had their birth in a secret
hope that she might find a letter from Ben Kelham upon her return.

She was leaning over the rail, thinking about him, as the boat made its
lazy way down-stream.

"So funny," she was saying to herself as they approached Luxor under a
sunset sky. "I wonder if he will be at the hotel. I somehow feel him quite
near."

And then her thoughts were distracted by the exclamations and laughter
of the passengers as they rushed to the side, causing the boat to take a
distinct list.

What little things serve to amuse us!

The bluebottle at the Cathedral service; the stray dog which rushes
athwart the regal procession; the straw hat blown through the traffic!

The steamer was churning up the waters of the river down which
Cleopatra had passed in all her power and beauty; on each side were the
ruins of temples and tombs built to the glory of great god or mighty
emperor; yet the tourists flung down guide-books and left their tea to shout
encouragement and wave their handkerchiefs to Ben Kelham and Sybil
Sidmouth, who were also having tea on the slanting deck of their private
steamer, which had run aground on the pestiferous sand-bank.

Mrs. Sidmouth, in the seclusion of the saloon, was summoning all her
strength for a real nerve-storm.

Damaris looked hard for a moment, then became deadly-white, and
backed her way out through the crowd. She flashed a quick glance round in
search of the Thistletons, and saw them leaning dangerously far over the
rail, trying to attract the attention of Sybil Sidmouth, who was smiling so

contentedly as she handed her companion his tea; then she turned to run to
the saloon to hide herself, and ran, instead, right into Jane Coop's arms.

There was a grim set to the maid's mouth and a steely glitter in her eyes.

"I was just coming to ask you, dearie, if you'd like a cup of tea. One gets
fair sick of the ruins and things one sees on this river. The young ladies can
come and find you at tea if they want to."

How often had the motherly woman gone out to bring in the lamb from
the storm, or hunted the fields and hedgerows for her straying chick!

Later, she sat on the edge of her darling's bed and patted the curly head
resting on her faithful heart, to the accompaniment of little clucking sounds.

"There now, dearie—there now—there now! It isn't worth crying over;
every river is as full of good fish as ever sailed on it in a boat that couldn't
run straight. Let old Nannie dry her baby's tears. There how—there now!"

She dried the tear-stained little face with a big handkerchief, and rocked
her child to the rhythm of the music which drifted from the hall, borne by
the night breeze, through the open window, until the sobs had ceased.

And in the ball-room the Thistleton family nodded their heads sagely to
the rhythm of the same music.

"I am sure she didn't see Mr. Kelham and Sybil, Mamma," Ellen was
saying. "She was having tea when we went to find her, and looked quite all
right."

"I was thankful when I saw her," broke in Berenice, patting a thick
envelope with the Edinburgh post-mark. "On the Nile, together, it really did

not seem comme il faut at all, and wherever Mrs. Sidmouth was, she might
have countenanced the—er—the courtship by her presence on deck."

"Well, all's well that ends well," said Mamma placidly, as she secretly
returned thanks that her daughters were not as others.

******

But later, far into the night, Damaris stood at her window, with her arms
round the bulldog's neck.

"You're the only one who really loves me, Well-Well. Everybody else run
away and leaves me. I'm—I'm, so unhappy!"

Tears stood in the big eyes as she flung out her arms and cried in a
sudden passionate intensity, "Marraine! Marraine! I want you—I want you!
If you loved me, you would come to me, because I want you so!"

CHAPTER XXIII

"The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree
I planted; they have torn me, and I bleed.
I should have known what fruit would spring
from such a seed."

BYRON.

Olivia Duchess of Longacres stood on the balcony of the hotel, looking
down at the cortege which had escorted the wife of the Sheik el-Umbar
from the House 'an Mahabbah some way out in the desert and which was
making its way as best it could through the tortuous, narrow, unpaved
streets of Khargegh town.

The white and only wife of the great Arab travelled en reine; two
outriders with modern rifles slung across the shoulder and brandishing
throwing-spears, caused consternation amongst the spectators as at a word
or touch of the unspurred foot they made their magnificent horses rear and
back and plunge.

One trick or feat had caused the heavens to be rent with screams of pure
joy and shouts of "Wallahi-el-azim," "Ma sha-Allah" and other references to
the might and glory of the Almighty.

You do not often see this feat of strength and dexterity, and when you do,
it brings your heart almost out of your body and has an exhibition of tent-
pegging simply beaten to a frazzle.

A spectator of the tender age of three, clothed—as it was a day of festival
—in tarbusch and voluminous robe girt about him with a cummerbund—on
ordinary days he would have been clothed in nature and girt in dirt—
toddled straight into the middle of a square, just as the outriders charged
across it. There was no room for them to turn, so packed were the places
where the sidewalks should have been, neither was there time in which to
rein in their horses. Women shrieked and beat their breasts, men looked on
at the inevitable tragedy with the composure of the sterner sex.

The babe stood stock-still.

And Yussuf the outrider, bending low on his saddle, drove straight down
upon it, gathered the back part of the cummerbund and some folds of the
voluminous skirt upon the point of his spear, and, lifting the mite, amidst
yells and shouts and wild clamour, carried him at spear-length and top
speed safely across the square.

Where the real danger comes in is in judging the exact amount of stuff to
gather on the spear-head; an inch or so too much and you may get a part of
the kiddie's little back; an inch or so too little and, when you have him high
in air, you may cut through the cloth and cause said kiddie to make a hasty
descent to terra firma.

Anyway, the child was safely restored to its fond mother, who
simultaneously smacked it and stuffed its mouth with fly-blown
sweetmeats, and became the hero for the latter part of the day.

The real cortège was headed by camels bearing gifts from the House el-
Umbar to the great white woman who stood, on the balcony in a grey silk
taffeta dress, a shawl of priceless lace on her head and a grey parrot upon
her shoulder. Silks, jewels, sweetmeats, bibelots in ivory and precious
metal, dates, coffee in berries, a monkey and a bushel of wheat were
amongst the gifts carried by the camels who grumbled and rumbled as they
stalked with swaying gait and contemptuous half-closed eyes.

Next came the armed escort, mounted on horses, with modern rifles slung
and cummerbunds stuck full of the most atrocious-looking knives. They
scowled at everyone, but as they passed under the balcony each one drew
his knife and rattled it against that of his neighbour so that the weapons
made a glittering arch in the light of the setting sun, as salutation to the old
white woman who was of their mistress's race.

Came Mustapha, the Ethiopian, into whose care the Sheikh had given his
wife all those years ago, when they had ridden out of the desert up to his
dwelling amongst the talik palms of the Flat Oasis.

He was on foot—not that he had done the entire journey in like manner—
and held the golden chain of the magnificent camel upon which his mistress
rode.

She rode in a palanquin of ivory with curtains of rose satin embroidered
in precious stones; on either side, also on camels, rode two slaves who
waved huge circular fans on long staffs to cool the air about this woman
who was so beloved throughout the land for her good deeds and loving,
helping hand.

She was in silk robes of rose covered in a satin cloak of deeper shade; she
was closely veiled as becomes the wife of a Mohammedan, and wore no
jewels save a rope of pearls; and her steady, wonderful blue eyes, which

were just twin heavens of happiness, shone with delight as she looked up at
the old woman who had known her as a girl, with her hair hanging in two
great plaits.

She put both hands to her forehead and spread them out in the beautiful
Eastern gesture of welcome, then bowed to her knees, as she passed.

Then, turning, she pulled her yashmak a little to one side. "Petite
Maman!" she cried. "Welcome, Petite Maman!" and blew her a kiss from
the tips of her rosy fingers.

Arrived at the entrance, the armed escort made a circle round her with
drawn knives; her camel knelt; a Persian carpet was laid across the quasi-
clean stones; then Mustapha the Ethiopian made a sign, upon which
Ameena, the little hunchback woman who loved her mistress more than her
life and who had been transported with joy when she had laid the first-born,
the son, in the mother's arms, came running swiftly.

Mustapha and Ameena lived one long life of secret feud; they fought like
cat and dog as to who could do the most in their mistress's service; they
stood shoulder to shoulder and fought everybody else in the same good
cause; and the huge man scowled fiercely as the deformed little woman
arranged the flowing robes and walked up the Persian carpet behind the
wife of the great Sheikh.

"Well, I never!" was Hobson's comment as she peeked from behind a
door. "Her grace must have made a mistake. You take that downstairs," she
added, coming boldly out onto the landing to intercept the slave with the
monkey. "Downstairs," and she pointed down to the entrance, surging with
people, "unless you want the place to be full of feathers and fur!"

Jill stood in the doorway; looked across at her godmother, and made the
beautiful gesture of salutation, then removed her veil, picked up her robes
and ran across the room right into the outstretched arms.

Tears were very close as they laughed and held each other by the hand,
but the laughter died away altogether as they sat in the falling shadows, the
younger one with her head on the older one's lap.

Two wise women, they were fighting for the happiness of the young, as
the shadows fell and the stars came out and faded before the light of the
moon as she trailed her silver garments across the heavens.

Jill had risen once to her feet, in a moment of anger, and had gone out
onto the balcony and stood looking down, smiling upon the crowd,
composed chiefly of women, who had raised their hands and called down
the blessings of Allah upon her.

The steps were strewn with gifts, ranging from live goats to masses of
sticky sweetmeats and glass beads. Mothers had brought their sickly babies
and laid them down amongst the goats and beads, hoping that if even the
shadow of the blessed woman were to fall upon them they might be healed.

Mustapha kept guard, hurling abuse at those who tarried, helping their
departure by the aid of his foot. Hobson stood like a grim sentinel outside
the sitting-room door. She had made tea under the greatest difficulty—the
kettle of tepid water had been flung at the salaaming offender who had
brought it—and had taken it in blushing brick-red when Jill had risen and
kissed her on both cheeks. Dinner had been served, hardly tasted, and been
sent away, and a whole tray of cups full of burnt milk showed the
perturbation of the maid's mind as she waited, and waited for the sound of
the little bell which summoned her to her grace's presence.

"You are a noble-looking woman, my child," said the duchess, as she
keenly scrutinised the fair face with great blue eyes and broad humourous
mouth, which, but for an added serenity and dignity, was so very like the
face of the girl who had been left behind at Ismailiah over twenty years ago,
and who had journeyed into the desert with the Arabian Sheikh and had
married him. "I'm not surprised your husband adores you. Could he not
have come with you? I have always longed to see him."

It seemed that the Sheikh Hahmed had been invited to Bagdad, to some
conference concerning the big Arabian question, but hoped to be able to
greet her grace before her departure. In the meanwhile his dwellings, his
servants, his horses and everything he was possessed of were hers.

"And he means it, Petite Maman; he loves making people happy. I—I
love him." She paused for a moment; then looked straight into the stern old
eyes. "My love for my son is as great as my love for his father, and I would
lay down my life for their happiness."

There was no tenderness in the sad old eyes and no lines of yielding in
the stern old mouth; for although her heart was aching to say yes to the
mother's insistent demands for her son's happiness, her common sense had
turned her into a very rock of resistance.

"I am happy, radiantly happy." Jill, who was sitting on a stool at the old
woman's feet, slipped to her knees and caught the wrinkled old hands in her
own. "So why should the little girl not be happy with my son, who is the
finest man and dearest son ever born to woman? Tell me what difference is
there? Why should my son be made unhappy? Tell me!"

She knew perfectly well. Her son's words on the roof of his dwelling
under the stars were ringing in her ears; but she was hanging on to a very
forlorn hope with both hands, tricking herself with the thought that, out of

her love for her, the wise old woman might see things in a different light
and give her consent to the marriage just because the man was her son.

But the old woman caught the mother to her breast and stroked the
golden head and kissed it with a world of pain in her sad old eyes.

"Because, dear," and the words were very gentle and the voice was very
soft, "just because, when we love, we think of ourselves only, and not of
those to come."

The old woman sighed as Jill raised her head sharply: "Try to understand,
little one. You, my dear, a white woman, married a pure-bred Arab. Ah! my,
dear, my dear, forgive me, your son is———"

Jill sprang to her feet, and as she sprang caught the rope of pearls upon
the arm of the chair, breaking it and scattering the jewels to the four corners
of the room.

She flung out her hands, making the Eastern sign to scare away evil
spirits. "The omen!" she whispered. "The omen! A broken string of pearls
means—means—death."

"Come, come, child," said the old lady sharply, and to allay the unsightly
terror in the other's face, and also because she believed in using an axe in
felling a tree, repeated her last remark. "You are suffering now through the
selfishness of love. Women who marry without giving a thought to the
result of the marriage, to the good or the harm it might bring to the children
of that marriage, deserve to suffer. Marry the man, if you really love him
and can help him by being his wife; but let there be no children if there is
anything in the union that might hurt them." She rose and crossed to the girl
who was standing staring into a corner of the room, with a world of horror

in her eyes. She moved back as the old woman, came towards her, holding
out her hands as though to ward off some evil thing she saw in the shadows.

"I can't bear it," she whispered; "I can't bear it. I don't believe that
anyone, could think that of Hugh. Remember how loved he was at Harrow
———"

"Ah! my dear, my dear, there was your great mistake . . ."

"You're wrong," interrupted Jill harshly. "You're hopelessly, cruelly
wrong. He was idolised in England; he is loved out here. It was sheer spite
on the part of the—woman who told him that he was—was——" She
pressed her hands over her mouth as she backed to the wall, then flung her
arms out wide; her face was dead-white, her eyes blazing; she reminded the
old woman of a tigress fighting for her cubs; she was beautiful beyond
words in the tragedy of her motherhood. "I don't believe you—I don't
believe you—I—you———"

"Listen, Jill." The old woman's voice was as cold as ice as she watched
the agony in the fair face. Dear heavens! she did not want to hurt; she
wanted to give in and gather the child up in her arms, but she knew what
was best. "Your boy knows it, dear; he knows he is out of the running.
Come over to me and listen whilst I tell you something." She sat down and
pulled the suffering child down beside her, who lay across the silken knees
like the stricken mother across the knees of the wise Madonna and made no
sound or movement whilst she listened to the bitter words of the fortune-
teller in the hotel garden at Cairo.

A little silence fell; then, very gently, very tenderly the old woman spoke:

"So you see, dear, until she is of age it will be only my duty to see that
Damaris does not marry your son."

And Jill sprang to her feet and beat her hands together.

"And I," she said, "I will give my heart's blood to bring happiness to my
son. Death alone shall———"

She stopped and shivered as she glanced over her shoulder out into the
night, then drew herself up with a surpassing dignity and threw out her
hands in the Eastern gesture of resignation.

"You say 'I will not,' I say 'I will,' but it is God who decides." With a little
sobbing sigh she relinquished the unequal struggle, just as Hobson walked
boldly into the room and stood inside the door, like a graven image of
intense displeasure, when her mistress, unable to withstand the unspoken
disapproval, consented, after a promise to Jill to have another long talk on
the morrow, to go to bed.

But there was to be no long talk anyway in the town of Khargegh on the
morrow.

She lay in bed, propped by pillows against which, divested of its mask of
red and white and blue, the dear little old face shone brown. A priceless bit
of lace hid her own white locks, free for the night of the outrageous
perruque which covered them by day and which lay at the moment hidden
in its box.

A pair of crimson bed-slippers peeped from under the bed, another pair,
absurdly small, outrageously high-heeled, buckled and crimson, made a
splash of colour near the dressing-table. Her little hands were gently folded
under the ruffles of priceless lace of her cashmere night-attire as she lay
quite still, trying to find a way out through the jungle of pain and grief
which seemed to spread round and about so many she loved; whilst Dekko,

puffed out with sleepiness, sat on the back of a chair, muttering
incoherently to some fanciful image of his weird brain.

Hobson lay fast asleep in the next room, which had a communicating
door with that of her mistress. Knowing nothing of nerves or of
temperament, she had dropped asleep as soon as her head, with scanty locks
tortured into a chevaux-de-frise of steel pins, had touched the pillow; her
strong hands were clenched on the frill of her stout calico nightdress; her
powerful face looked grim in the dim light of the moon, which, high in the
heavens, flung a silver shaft through the open window straight across the
bed. There was absolutely no sound when, just as, so many miles away,
Damaris made her passionate appeal, as she stood by the window, Hobson,
dour, stolid, unimaginative, yet with a streak of Scotch blood in her veins,
sat straight up in bed. Her eyes were wide open as she stared in front of her,
then she passed her powerful hand over her grim face and flung the
bedclothes to one side.

"She's in trouble." She spoke very clearly, sat for a moment thinking,
then reached for a puce dressing-gown trimmed mulberry. "I'll go and tell
her," and the infinite love in the pronoun was good to hear. "She'll
understand."

The duchess turned: her head as the door opened slowly, but made no
movement, although her heart suddenly quickened its beat.

"Yes?" she said quietly.

Hobson walked up to the bed and took one of the little old hands between
her own powerful ones.

"Miss Damaris wants you, ma'am." She spoke with certain conviction;
then added, "I've had a dream, ma'am. I saw nothing, but I heard Miss

Damaris calling you. It woke me up. 'Marraine,' she said, 'I want you.' That
was all. And she does, ma'am."

She stood patting the hand of her mistress, who lay for a moment quite
still; then the faithful creature put a Shetland shawl round the bent
shoulders as the old lady sat straight up in bed.

"Would you please find Miss Jill's maid," (she used the term of the past,
when Jill Carden had stayed at the Castle and had teased Hobson to death)
"and ask her to tell her mistress that I should be pleased if she could find it
convenient to come to my room for a moment."

Hobson found the aged body-servant lying asleep outside her mistress's
door.

Ameena had learned a few words of the English language in the last
twenty years, but not enough to allow her to understand the terrifying
person who stood over her; so that she shook her head whilst Hobson
repeated her request over and over again, and ever more distinctly, until it
ended at last in a veritable shout which brought Jill, who had not slept for
the ache in her mother-heart, to the door.

For a moment she stood, a beautiful picture, with big questioning eyes
and two great plaits of auburn hair hanging down over her satin wrap; then
she ran down the corridor and into her godmother's bedroom.

In an hour those two forceful women had made their plans, acting
without hesitation upon what might so easily have been the outcome of
digestive trouble on Maria Hobson's part.

Fully clothed, the two maids entered her grace's bedroom, the one
carrying the tea-tray and the other a plate of biscuits.

"Ameena," said Jill, who was sitting on the end of the bed, "please go and
find Mustapha. Tell him to go to the station, find the station-master and give
him this letter. We want a special train as soon as possible. Mustapha is to
bring me a written reply from the station-master."

She spoke with the authority of the Eastern potentate and took no notice
of the maid when she knelt and kissed the hem of her satin wrap.

"Give me a cigarette, Hobson," said her grace, in the depths of whose
eyes twinkled the star of humour. "We shall be starting as soon as possible,
maybe directly after breakfast, for Luxor."

"Yes, your grace. I will begin the packing," said the imperturbable
Hobson, placing the tray on the table beside the bed. "And when you have
had your tea, ma'am, will you try and get a little sleep? You can leave
everything safely to me."

But special trains do not grow like blackberries upon a side line in the
East, so that many weary hours passed before they set out upon the return
journey, which was rendered infinitely tedious by the never-ending mistakes
which got them shunted into sidings to allow the ordinary trains to pass.

CHAPTER XXIV

"The watchmen that went about the city found me; they smote me, they
wounded me; the keepers of the wall took away my veil from me."

SONG OF SOLOMON.

The night before Ben Kelham's return to Cairo, Zulannah sat on a pile of
cushions, with her back to the crumbling plaster wall, in the filthy, smoke-
filled hovel.

She had completely recovered, and save for the excruciating pain caused
by the shrunken muscles when she moved, was as sound as a bell, and
likely to live to a ripe old age, slave to her whilom servant, who sat on his
heels, inhaling the fumes of the jewel-encrusted nargileh which his heart
had always coveted.

It is useless writing about the hell through which the woman had lived
from the moment she had returned to consciousness. Besides, there are
some things which words cannot describe, and which in any case are best
left alone, not even to the imagination.

She was absolutely in the power of the negroid brute. With the
destruction of her beauty she had lost everything save what she had in the
bank, and from the ever-growing heaps of little canvas bags in a corner and

little piles of banknotes under the straw, she knew that some day that, too,
must come to an end.

She had loved her jewels, loved the shimmering pearls and sparkling
diamonds, and had found her greatest joy in dipping her hand into a leather
bag filled with unset stones. How often had she sat in the luxury of her
bedroom, revelling in the trickle of the rubies, sapphires and emeralds from
between her fingers into her lap.

Even those she had lost.

The Milner safe stood open, showing empty shelves, and she shuddered
yet at the memory of the frightful scene which had followed her refusal to
open it.

She loved jewels; wanted them for their beauty; had fought the negro for
them; but there was one thing she clung to even more, and that was life, so
that when the huge hands had slowly, so very slowly pressed upon her neck,
she had given in and setting the combination, had swung the door slowly
back.

And Qatim, grey-green with fright, thinking that it had been worked by
the power of a djinn or devil, had flung her out into the night, and having
scraped a hole in the foetid earth under the straw, with fervent prayers to
whatever he worshipped, had withdrawn the jewels, hidden them, and
called the woman back.

Yes! she clung to life. Strange is it how we do, even when youth and
beauty and health have passed from us. How, crippled and unlovely, twisted
of temper or limb, with failing senses, in bath-chair, or propped on sticks,
we hang on to the last thread, when surely we ought to be so thankful to

snap it and be away to whatever our lives here have prepared for us over the
border.

"Were't not a shame, were't not a loss for him
In this clay carcase, crippled, to abide?"

Well might old Omar ponder upon this.

But Zulannah had a good reason for clinging to life, in spite of the
greatness of her debacle.

The metal of which had been wrought the one love that had come to her
in her short life had not been able to withstand the crucible of physical pain.
For hours and days she had writhed in the agony of her physical injury, with
no one to care if she suffered or starved, except the Ethiopian, who, when
her senses had come back to her, had twitted her upon her failure in her
love-affairs; had tormented and mocked and laughed, until a great wish for
revenge had taken the place of her former love for the Englishman.
Revenge, above all things, on the girl who had been capable of inspiring
love in two such men; revenge on the white man who had really been the
primary cause of her downfall, but a lingering, hellish revenge, if she could
only think of one, for the man who had given the order to the dogs just
because she had reviled the white girl, Damaris.

So she sat on the pile of cushions, smoking the cheapest cigarette of the
bazaar, whilst her cunning brain wove plots around the astounding news
Qatim had just imparted.

They were perfectly free from interruption. The door was barred and the
small aperture which served as window was too highly placed in the wall to
allow of eyes to peep; but it was superstition that really kept them safe and

proved far more potent as a barrier against their neighbours' curiosity than
any spike-crowned wall.

Qatim had given out that the woman was bewitched, and that death,
instantaneous and horrible, would be the fate awaiting anyone but himself
who should speak to her or look upon her unveiled face before the setting of
the sun—some of us Christians refuse to walk under ladders—and, although
it entailed much fetching and carrying and marketing on his part, still, it
ensured them solitude.

"And you saw him?"

She spoke with a sibilant intaking of breath, caused by the twist to her
mouth.

"Yes; with a beautiful white woman—another. They have come from
Assouan by the boat."

"Not the girl who rode in the desert with———"

She touched the purple angry marks on her cheek.

"Nay, woman; I have told thee, she walks in the blackness of the ruins,
with the man who caused thee thy hurt. She drives with him," he spat, "she
should take thy place in the bazaar, O Zulannah of the thousand lovers."

The woman paid no heed to the jibe.

"Who told thee?"

"Behold, the night-watchman of the big hotel upon the edge of the water
sent me word."

"Why?"

"That is no business of thine. Tell me what scheme thou hast in thy head.
Dost desire the death of the three?"

Zulannah shook her head and turning it so that the wounds and distortion
were hidden, leant against the wall.

"Not yet!" she said, loosening with filthy hand the uncombed masses of
jet-black hair, which still retained something of the perfume of better days.
"Not yet! Let me think awhile."

And she paid no heed to the man, who sat staring at her, breathing
heavily.

The right side of her face, untouched and perfect, showed in all its beauty
against the dirty whiteness of the wall; her hair served as a mantle to the
perfect figure in the soiled satin wrap; her crippled limbs showed not at all
in the foul room lit by a wick floating in a saucer of oil.

The light went out suddenly.

Oh, Zulannah! surely your cap of misery was full to the brim!

CHAPTER XXV

"He that has patience may compass anything."

RABELAIS.

Ben Kelham sat near the balustrade on the verandah of Shepheard's Hotel
just after breakfast, pretending to read the morning paper, whilst trying to
make up his mind.

Sybil Sidmouth and her mother, owing to lack of accommodation,
brought about by the crush of visitors in the huge caravanserai, had gone to
the Savoy; for which the man was secretly thankful.

He wanted to eat out his heart all by himself in the appalling loneliness
which had overwhelmed him when, on ringing up Heliopolis the night
before, he had learned that Damaris and the duchess had transferred
themselves to Luxor.

And you simply cannot indulge in your particular brand of malaise or
dolour with an extreme optimist sitting opposite you at meals, or adjacent to
your elbow at most other times.

He anathematised the postal system of Egypt; his own haste in accepting
the girl's refusal; the oriental imagination which magnified cats into lions;

but, above all, the wash of that steamer (upon which Damaris had returned
from Denderah) which had re-floated his own craft and sent him racing full
steam ahead for Cairo.

Another hour of the infernal wait on the sandbank, and he would have
transferred himself to one of the scores of small boats and been ferried
across to Luxor, where he would have dined at the Winter Palace Hotel,
whilst waiting to catch the express to Cairo, and perhaps have seen his
beloved in the dining-room, or have heard that she was staying there.

He was thoroughly irritated as he pondered in his deliberate way as to the
best thing to do.

Should he take the first train back to Luxor, or, as the duchess had not
seen fit to acquaint him as to her movements, should he stay where he was,
write her a letter, or send a telegram and wait for an answer? Anyway, he
was irritated enough to scowl at the commissionaire who was rating a
woman whom he had seen hanging about the street, doubtless with intent of
soliciting a nickel coin from one of the great white race as he—or she—
descended the steps to stroll along the street.

She made a few choice remarks upon the undoubted inclusion of a pig in
the commissionaire's parentage, in a curiously sibilant voice, then limped
away with a distressing swing of her body from the hips.

"Can't you keep those people quiet?" Kelham demanded angrily, as he
moved a chair further back, and lit a cigarette.

An hour had passed, in which he had come to no decision, when Fate, in
the shape of a page-boy, offered him the just-arrived, local morning paper,
which he took and read, with only half a mind upon the gossipy contents.

"By Jove!" he suddenly exclaimed. "If that isn't a bit of luck! Here's the
very excuse for getting down there without kind of thrusting myself upon
them." He flattened out the paper and again read through the paragraph
which gave a most extraordinarily detailed account of the immensely
wealthy Hugh Carden Ali, his career at Harrow; his travels; his stables in
the desert; his birds and a hundred and one other details calculated to
interest those who like reading about other people's most intimate affairs. It
ended: ". . . Being a great sportsman, the strange story of lion which is
causing such uneasiness and is likely to do harm to the Luxor season, has
taken him to his Tents of Purple and Gold, one of the wonders of modern
Egypt and which lie in the desert a little distance from the well-known
Colossi."

He did not frown this time as he folded the paper and turned to watch the
commissionaire in conclave with a coal-black Ethiopian who, clad in
crimson tunic, enormous turban and with scimitar rattling at his side,
tendered an envelope.

"Yes, yes," said the hotel servant. "I will see that it is delivered into the
gentleman's own hands. And, tell me"—he lowered his voice as he winked
his eye—"has she returned from Alexandria?"

Qatim was caught in a quandary, and he cursed the vanity which had
urged him to don his most resplendent garments upon his errand to the great
hotel, to which he had come after a violent argument with Zulannah.

With a heart full of hatred, and agony in her twisted limbs the woman had
hung about the streets in front of the hotel until she had seen the man for
whom she had felt such a sudden and fleeting love, and who was the
primary cause of her disfigurement.

Hurt him she must, if only as a balm to her own physical and mental
agony; and in what better way than by destroying his faith in the white girl
he loved?

Hence the letter, written hastily in the hovel and consigned to the care of
the Ethiopian, who, in return for his assistance, had demanded backshisch
in the shape of a pink leaf covered with strange black marks.

The woman's presence in the great city in her deplorable state was the
last thing he wanted to be known; so he lied—clumsily.

"Nay; she is in Alexandria," he blurted out.

The commissionaire slowly winked an eye.

"Perhaps," he said; "perhaps not," and chuckled as the negro turned
hastily and strode away in the direction of the bank.

And thus came it to be known in the bazaar that Zulannah the courtesan
had returned to the great city.

And a little later, Ben Kelham felt no tweak at the string with which Fate
had hobbled him to his destiny, when, on hearing his number called, he took
the letter from the page-boy, turned it over, and looked at it on each side, as
we do when curious, but not over-interested; then he opened it idly, read it
and crushed it in both hands.

It was written in the execrable English Zulannah had picked up in her
few years of cosmopolitan intercourse with different nationalities; it was in
vile hand-writing and was as despicable a method of revenge as an
anonymous letter usually is.

It ran after this fashion:

"If you want to find your white woman go and look for her in the ruins of
Karnak, at night, in the arms of her half-caste lover, Hugh Carden Ali."

And the woman who had limped back to the street, sniggered behind her
veil as she watched the man tear the letter into shreds, while he sat and
thought out an answer to this second problem.

"It's a damnable lie. My Damaris and good old Carden! I expect they've
met, but who———" He sniffed at his hands suddenly. "Pah! Now, where
have I smelt that scent before?—filth!" He sat with his hands to his nose,
then frowned as, under the suggestion of the perfume, the picture of a
lovely woman clad in silks and satins and wearing rich jewels rose before
him.

"My God!" he said slowly, as the full significance of it all dawned slowly
upon him. "Of course! She—she invited me to—to visit her—and I refused.
By all that's clean and decent, if I don't make her pay for this! And it's
Carden, too, who can tell me the best way to set about it. The harlot! I
wonder if I shall have to wait until evening for a train." He clenched his
hands until the knuckles showed white, as he unseeingly watched a woman
limp down the street. "I'll make her sorry she was ever born."

He need not have worried on that point. Fate was dogging those unsteady
feet back to the hovel.

The spreading of a prairie fire is slow compared to the speed with which
news runs through the bazaar. The servants in the big house in the big
garden went sullenly about their various tasks of tidying and clearing up the
courtesan's home, whilst little knots of people, composed principally of
women, stood about in the vicinity of the gate.

It was the first time the tyrannical woman had been absent upon a long
journey, and the relatives and friends even unto a most distant generation of
her servants had taken advantage of it to visit the house and examine its, to
them, surpassing luxury.

The Ethiopian, with his mind fixed only upon the bank, had taken but
little interest in the house itself, and had visited it but rarely, and then only
for the sake of appearances; so that the visitors had become more and more
brazen, as the days passed, fingering the satins, sitting upon the cushions,
feasting on the floor.

Bes, the monstrous keeper of the lions, had become prime favourite with
the men, and the neighbourhood had resounded with the roars of the brutes
at night as they fought for their food.

Also was there something savage in the way the women visitors had
fingered and touched everything, and had visited every corner of the
building. They were fat or thin, plain or passably good-looking; they were
all hideously poor, and in their heads they had the echo of the gibes their
menfolk had cast at them, when, returning with empty pockets, they had
boasted of great conquests.

Which boasting the sillies had believed, thinking, as all women think,
that their own particular male has been specially favoured of the gods and is
therefore an Adonis in the eyes of every other woman.

There was an indefinite air of trouble in that quarter of the bazaar which
increased with the heat of the day. Household matters were neglected,
whilst the women foregathered to talk; words were few, but gestures were
quick and expressive; the servants, wondering at the absence of the
Ethiopian, grumbled as they worked; they had been paid no wages in their
mistress's absence, and were on the verge of mutiny.

Brave words! When they knew that they would fall flat upon their faces
at the first swish of her satin robes.

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
—ça 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 brève:
Un peu d'espoir,
Un peu de rêve
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 _bar_maid, 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