d! Captain Lenox is
in Baby's nursery; and we can shut off the dressing-room for you, if
you can manage with a chair-bed. It's quite safe. Everything has been
disinfected. I believe Theo knew you were coming! Will that do?"

"Do? _Ma foi_, . . but how does one say thank you for such goodness?"

"One refrains!" Desmond remarked, handing her empty cup across to his
wife.

Quita laughed.

"You are incorrigible!" said she. "But there is still this to think
of. With your friends coming and going, how am I to be . . accounted
for till I have seen . . Eldred? If I am Miss Maurice, _par exemple_,
what am I doing in Dera Ishmael? And if not . . ? _Mon Dieu_, but
it's an ignominious tangle. I'm as bad as Alice in Wonderland in the
wood. I seem suddenly to have lost my identity: and in my mad anxiety
and impatience to get here I never thought anything about it till I was
sweltering in that horrible barge this morning. Shall I live
altogether in my room? It would be no more than I deserve."

"My dear, you'll do nothing of the sort." It was Honor this time,
"Luckily for you, the Battery's in camp; and since Captain Lenox's
illness there's been an end of my tea-parties. Our own people may be
looking in now he's better. But for the next two days or so I shall
simply be '_dawazar bund_.'[5] It needs no effort to develop a
headache, or a touch of fever this weather. There's only Paul, and
Frank, whom I couldn't shut out. May we just explain to them, more or
less, how things stand?"

"But yes. Of course you must. And . . after all . . ."

She hesitated, flushing painfully.

"After all," Desmond came to her rescue, "it won't be so very long
before the vexed question of your identity is settled for good. Now
I'd better go and speak to Paul. He may be turning up for tea, any
minute; and that would be awkward for you."

As he reached the door at the far end of the room, Honor fled after him.

"Read those, dear," she said breathlessly, thrusting a letter and
telegram into his hand. "They will account for this morning. I had
bad news. But thank God it's all right now. I wired."

"And never told _me_?"

"You were so happy. How could I?"

"Then that was why you bolted?"

"Yes. I couldn't have kept it up for long."

"Well . . I've no time to scold you now," he said, looking unspeakable
things at her. "Wait till I get you to myself, . . that's all!"

This short colloquy, carried on in an underton