," with a sudden, almost startling change of tone, "I was _not_
happy there, or anywhere else, since last I saw you!"

"Robbers!" says Dulce, hastily, with a rather forced little laugh;
"regular brigands, do you mean, going about in hordes, with tunics, and
crimson sashes, and daggers. How _could_ one be happy with such terrible
people turning up at every odd corner? I daresay," trifling nervously
with a wine glass, "it would make one often wish to be at home again."

"I often wished to be at home again." Somehow his manner gives her to
understand that the gentlemen in crimson sashes had nothing whatever to
do with this wish.

"I fancied brigands belonged exclusively to Greece and Italy," says
Dulce, still intent upon the wine-glass. "Are they very picturesque, and
do they really go about dressed in all the colors of the rainbow?"

Plainly Miss Blount has been carefully studying the highly-colored
prints in the old school-books, in which the lawless Greeks are depicted
as the gayest of the gay.

"They are about the most ill-looking ruffians it has ever been my fate
to see," says Mr. Dare, indifferently.

"How disappointing! I don't believe you liked being in Egypt after all,"
says Dulce, who cannot resist returning to tread once more the dangerous
ground.

"I think one place is about as good as another," says Mr. Dare,
discontentedly, "and about as bad. One shouldn't expect too much, you
know."

"Perhaps it would be as well if one didn't expect anything," says Dulce.

"_Better_, no doubt."

"You take a very discontented view of things; your traveling has made
you cynical, I think."

"Not my _traveling_?"

This is almost a challenge, and she accepts it.

"What then?" she asks, a little coldly.

"Shall I tell you?" retorts he, with an unpleasant smile. "Well, no; I
will spare you; it would certainly not interest _you_. Let us return to
our subject; you are wondering why I am not in raptures about Egypt; I
am wondering why I should be."

"No; I was finding fault with you because you gave me the impression
that all places on earth are alike indifferent to you."

"Perhaps that is true. I don't defend myself. But I know there was a
time when certain scenes were dear to me."

"There _was_?"

"Yes; I've outgrown it, I suppose; or else memory, rendering all things
bitter, is to blame. It is our cruelest enemy, I dare say we might all
be pretty comfortable forever if we could only 'Quaff the kind Nepenthe,