avalier,
but I believe I have still the strength and virility of a man." He
swelled a little with the strutting spirit of the mating male. "You will
learn that my heart is still the heart of a boy where you are conceded
and that our life won't be a shadowed thing."

"I must have time to think," she said faintly. "I don't--don't know
yet."

Driven by wanderlust and an unappeasable discontent, Stuart Farquaharson
had been in many remote places. Around those towns which were Meccas for
tourists he made wide detours. His family had jealously kept its honor
untarnished heretofore and though he bore himself with a stiffer outward
pride than ever, he inwardly felt that fingers of scandal were pointing
him out, through no misdeed of his own. Now he was back in Cairo from
the Sudan and the upper Nile, almost as brown and hard of tissue as the
Bedouins with whose caravans he had traveled and for the first time in
many weeks he could regain touch with his mail. That was a matter of
minor importance, but his novel had come from the press on the day he
sailed out of New York harbor and perhaps there awaited him at
Shepheard's some report from his publisher. That gentleman had predicted
success with an abundant optimism. Stuart himself had been sceptical.
Now he would know.

He sent his luggage ahead and drifted on foot with the tide. What a
place this would be, he reflected, to idle time away with the
companionship of love. His eyes narrowed painfully with a memory of how
Conscience and he had once talked of spending a honeymoon in Egypt. That
seemed as long ago as the age of Egypt itself and yet not long enough to
have lost its sting. Grunting and lurching along the asphalt, with bells
tinkling from their trappings, went a row of camels and camel-riders.
They threaded their unhurried way on cushioned hoofs through a traffic
of purring roadsters and limousines. Drawn by undersized stallions, an
official carriage clattered by. Its fez-crowned occupant gazed
superciliously out as the gaudily uniformed members of his _kavasse_ ran
alongside yelling to the crowds to make way for the Pasha! Fakirs led
their baboons, magicians carried cobras in wicker trays, and peddlers
hawked their scarabs and souvenirs. Against the speckless overhead blue,
rose the graceful domes and minarets of mosques and the fringed tops of
palms.

Farquaharson lightly crossed the terrace at Shepheard's Hotel and
traversed the length of the hall to the office a