though he might care for the woman, was not
himself under her influence. She had never seen him look as he looked
now.

The partner who had brought Margaret out on to the balcony constituted
himself Mrs. Mervill's cavalier. He was immensely struck by her beauty
and was inwardly overjoyed when Michael Amory introduced him to her.
He had not engaged himself for supper because there had been no one
with whom he cared to spend the time, except Margaret, and she was
engaged to Michael. Now that he had obtained an introduction to Mrs.
Mervill, he was delighted to attend to her wants.

If Michael Amory had seen Millicent Mervill's attitude towards her
companion, he might have felt--and very naturally--a certain amount of
vanity. Born with little or no sense of honour or morals, she was
extremely fastidious. No one could have been more selective.
Ninety-nine per cent. of the men she met bored her not to tears, but to
rudeness; for the hundredth she might feel an unbridled passion.

Margaret and her companion were seated at a little supper-table in the
immense dining-room of the hotel, a room which been built after the
proportions and decorated in the manner of an Egyptian temple. Their
table was close to a column, which was decorated from pedestal to
capital with the most familiar mythological figures of ancient Egypt.
Tall lotus flowers with their green leaves decorated the lower portion
of it. The whole thing certainly was an amazingly clever reproduction
of one of the ancient columns of the famous hypostyle hall at Karnak.
A gayer scene could hardly be imagined, for the bright colours of the
ancient decorations had been faithfully copied.

Margaret had been talking rather more than was her wont to Michael,
about things which neither really interested her nor were in sympathy
with their mood. Their former intimate silence had given place to a
banal conversation, which hurt them, one as much as the other, while
they kept it up.

The nicest part of the evening, for so Meg had thought that it would
be, was proving a failure, a dire and pitiful failure. The only thing
to do was to accept Michael under the new conditions and get what
pleasure she could out of the magnificent scene. The Egyptian
servants, in their long white garments and high red tarbushes, the
Nubians, in their full white drawers and bright green sashes and
turbans, were moving silently about, administering as only native
servants can administer t