oulder to Michael Amory. She
was envious because she could see at a glance that Margaret was all
that was fine and clean and noble in womanhood. The girl whom Michael
Amory had been looking at would always get what was best in men, while
she could only get what was worst.

"My partner has had to leave me," she said to Michael, for he had paid
no attention to her remarks about Margaret. "He had a touch of fever;
it came on quite suddenly. Will you take me out of the ball-room?"

They had moved off together, Michael unable to help himself; he could
not allow her to go alone.

"If you aren't dancing, let us go and sit out on the balcony--it's too
lovely to be indoors. Now, isn't it?" she said, as they reached the
wide covered loggia, dotted with palms and basket-chairs and small
tables, which looked over the black rocks of the first cataract on the
Nile, a scene which in all Egypt has no equal, for it is unique and
extraordinary.

Beyond the river, with its black rocks, which showed in the water like
the indefinite forms of seals or shoals of swirling porpoises, there
was the bright yellow sand of the desert, which led into a world of
primitive silence, while above them and all around them there were the
stars and the night of Egypt.

Mrs. Mervill had left the ball-room early, because she knew that the
balcony would be almost empty during the first part of the evening.

"Isn't having this all to ourselves better than dancing in that crowd?
This is Egypt."

"It's beautiful," Michael said, as he arranged the cushions in her
chair to suit her taste, which was scarcely in keeping with the views
of a dignified woman. When he had finished, Mrs. Mervill let her hand
slip down his coat-sleeve--she had laid it there as she spoke to
him--until it rested on his wrist; her fingers were caressing.

"Tell me," she said, looking up into his face with a winning and soft
expression, "what have you been doing with yourself since we parted?
You have been much in my thoughts--never out of them, indeed."

"My usual work in the camp," Michael said. "Its interest always
increases, and although it seems pretty much the same every day to
ordinary people, to us it is full of variety."

"Lucky man! We poor women have no such distractions. I want to live
in the desert," she said eagerly. "I want to sleep in the open under
these stars."

Anyone might have made the same remark with no _arriere pensee_ in
their words. Mrs. Mervi