ts.

He was overwhelmingly responsible for her. If she had never met him,
if he had never continued to thrust himself upon her, she would have
gone on her predestined way, safe, secluded, luxurious--vaguely
unhappy and mutinous at times, perhaps, in the secret stirrings of
her blood, but still an indulged and wealthy little Moslem.

And now--she lay there, like a sleeping child, the dark tendrils of
hair clinging to her moist, sun-flushed cheeks, her long lashes
mingling their shadows with the purple underlining of the night's
terrors, homeless, exhausted, resourceless but for that anxious-eyed
young man.

Desperately he hoped that she would not wake to regret. Even a
sardonic tyrant in a palace might be preferable in the merciless
daylight to a helpless young man in the Libyan desert.

And she was so slight, so delicate, so made for rich and lovely
luxury.... Looking down at her he felt a lump in his throat ... a
lump of queer, choking tenderness....

He wanted to protect her, to save her, to spend himself for her....
He felt for her a reverent wonder, a stirring that was at once
protective and possessive and denying of all self.

He would die to save her. He tried to tell himself reassuringly that
he _had_ saved her.... If only he could keep her safe....

He thought of the life before her. He thought of that family in
France in whose name he had urged his interference. That unknown
Delcasse aunt who had sent out her agents for her lost heirs--would
she welcome and endow this lovely girl?

He could not doubt it.... Aimee's youth and beauty would be treasure
trove to a jaded lonely woman with money to invest in futures. Aimee
would be a belle, an heiress....

He looked down at her with a sudden darkness in his young eyes....
And still she slept, wrapped in the sorry mantle of his masquerade,
the torn chiffons of her negligee fluttering over her slim, bare
feet.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE TOMB OF A KING

There were several approaches to the American excavations. McLean,
on that morning after his visit from Jinny Jeffries, chose to borrow
a friend's motor and man and break the speed laws of Upper Egypt,
and then shift to an agile donkey at the little village from which
the gulleys ran west through the red hills into the desert.

It was a still, hot day without cloud or wind and the sun had an air
of standing permanently high in the heavens, holding the day at
noon. Shimmering heat waves quivered about th