that the English climate in winter
was altogether more than any sensible man could be expected to endure--a
somewhat surprising statement from a former M.F.H.--and declared his
intention of paying a visit to Iris and her husband in Egypt forthwith.

It was of Sir Richard Wayne that Anstice was thinking half an hour later
when the _Moldavia_ had come to her berth at the quay and he was about
to leave the ship on which the short and prosperous voyage had been
made.

However much the theory of the astral body of man may be denied or
ridiculed, there is no doubt that an unusually vivid thought-presentment
of a friend frequently precedes the appearance of that friend in the
flesh, and it is certain that the mental image of Sir Richard Wayne had
been, for some reason, so strongly before Anstice's mind that in a tall,
grey-clad figure pushing his way vigorously through the crowd of natives
he was inclined to see a striking resemblance to the object of his
thoughts.

He told himself, rather impatiently, that the notion was absurd. He had
been dwelling for so long on the vision of Sir Richard's daughter that
he had lost, for the moment, his sense of reality, and he turned aside
to reclaim his baggage from the vociferous Arabs who wished, so it
appeared, to appropriate both it and him, without casting another glance
in the direction of Sir Richard's double.

Yet the hallucination persisted. He could have sworn he heard Sir
Richard's voice raised in protest as the crowding natives impeded his
progress towards the gangway of the boat; and at last Anstice turned
fully round, with half-ashamed curiosity, to see what manner of man this
was who wore the semblance and spoke in the tongue of Sir Richard Wayne.

As his black eyes roved over the intervening faces they were caught and
held by another pair of eyes--grey eyes these, in whose clear and frank
depths was a strong resemblance to those other wide grey eyes he loved,
and in the next moment Anstice realized that a miracle had happened, and
that the first person to give him greeting in this land of mystery was
none other than Sir Richard Wayne himself.

About the gladness of the other's greeting there could be no two
opinions. Utterly disregarding the touts and porters who swarmed round
him Sir Richard came forward with outstretched hand, and his eyes fairly
shone with joy and with something that looked like relief.

"Anstice! By all that's wonderful!" He wrung the younger man