l you had less." He took out his watch.

CHAPTER XL. HYLDA SEEKS NAHOUM

It was as though she had gone to sleep the night before, and waked
again upon this scene unchanged, brilliant, full of colour, a chaos
of decoration--confluences of noisy, garish streams of life, eddies
of petty labour. Craftsmen crowded one upon the other in dark bazaars;
merchants chattered and haggled on their benches; hawkers clattered and
cried their wares. It was a people that lived upon the streets, for all
the houses seemed empty and forsaken. The sais ran before the Pasha's
carriage, the donkey-boys shrieked for their right of way, a train
of camels calmly forced its passage through the swirling crowds,
supercilious and heavy-laden.

It seemed but yesterday since she had watched with amused eyes the
sherbet-sellers clanking their brass saucers, the carriers streaming
the water from the bulging goatskins into the earthen bottles, crying,
"Allah be praised, here is coolness for thy throat for ever!" the idle
singer chanting to the soft kanoon, the chess-players in the shade of a
high wall, lost to the world, the dancing-girls with unveiled, shameless
faces, posturing for evil eyes. Nothing had changed these past six
years. Yet everything had changed.

She saw it all as in a dream, for her mind had no time for reverie or
retrospect; it was set on one thing only.

Yet behind the one idea possessing her there was a subconscious self
taking note of all these sights and sounds, and bringing moisture to her
eyes. Passing the house which David had occupied on that night when
he and she and Nahoum and Mizraim had met, the mist of feeling almost
blinded her; for there at the gate sat the bowab who had admitted her
then, and with apathetic eyes had watched her go, in the hour when it
seemed that she and David Claridge had bidden farewell for ever, two
driftwood spars that touched and parted in the everlasting sea. Here
again in the Palace square were Kaid's Nubians in their glittering
armour as of silver and gold, drawn up as she had seen them drawn then,
to be reviewed by their overlord.

She swept swiftly through the streets and bazaars on her mission to
Nahoum. "Lady Eglington" had asked for an interview, and Nahoum had
granted it without delay. He did not associate her with the girl for
whom David Claridge had killed Foorgat Pey, and he sent his own carriage
to bring her to the Palace. No time had been lost, for it was less than
twent