vague idea of causing her to
regret her decision in realising the vacuum, in her existence which his
absence might make. He had not an ounce of subtlety or vanity in his
nature. He had gone because he thought it would be the decent thing to
do as far as she was concerned, and also to hide his hurt and
disappointment, which were deep. The rumour of lion was genuine and
the excitement, extending far down the Nile, intense. In fact, with
the aid of the Oriental's prodigal imagination the one royal beast of
feminine persuasion which was reported as having been seen prowling
around Deir el-Bahari had been multiplied to two pairs ravaging the
outskirts of Assouan.

He sat drinking coffee with jolly Sybil Sidmouth and her nerve-stricken
stepmother in the lounge of the Savoy Hotel in Assouan just at the
moment when Damaris sat herself down on the broken column in the
Hypostyle Hall.

"Jolly bad luck we've had, haven't we?" said Sybil.

Kelham nodded his head. The last post had come in, with nothing for
him but a few letters from home.

"Yes, rotten!" he replied after a moment. "She _might_ have sent me a
line."

Sybil's stepmother moved restlessly in her chair.

Ridden with nerves, she was also mother of twin-daughters neurotic and
plain who, sered by nature and yellowed by time and on the wrong side
of the matrimonial hedge, had been only too glad to foist her on to the
plump shoulders of jolly, capable, pretty Sybil and to get rid of them
both for the winter.

In the last week or so a sprouting of hope had pierced the matchmaking
soil in the querulous lady's really well-intentioned heart, for, like
the proverbial half-loaf, a step-son-in-law is distinctly better than
none at all.

But Sybil only smiled at the absent-mindedness of the young man's
remark.

For weeks she had been the recipient of his confidences. He had
dragged her, suffocating, down into the mud-depths of the diffidence in
which he wallowed; had tugged her, gasping, to the Olympian heights
from which he viewed a world of love, all rosy-red; had flung her,
well-nigh senseless from exhaustion, upon the saw-teethed rocks of
despair; and had taken her paddling in the wash of his vapourings.

She was absolutely heart-whole, with a firm belief in the "lion"
rumour, and later, long after the end of this story, became the jolly,
popular wife of the great eye-specialist to whom she had rushed when,
after a soul-shaking scene with her step-sisters, s