Is it as long as that since you left Egypt?"

"Yes; longer. I've been in Abyssinia since then."

"Oh, of course, I remember now. It was in the papers. Building a railway
for King Menelik, weren't you?"

"Oh, yes. But the last eighteen months or so I've been idling--running
about to theatres and museums and so forth. I began at Athens and
finished up with London. I remember one day sitting on the steps of the
Parthenon declaiming the Antigone--and a moment with some meaning in it
seemed to have come at last."

"But, dash it, man, you're surely not comparing such trifles with a
thing like the great Nile Barrage? You were on that for some years,
weren't you? Do let's hear something about that. Up by the first
cataract, wasn't it? And hadn't you enormous quarries there on the spot?
You see, even sitting at home here, I haven't quite lost touch. But
you--good Lord! what things you must have seen! Fancy living at--what
was the name of the town again?"

"Assuan," answered Peer indifferently, looking out over the gardens,
where more and more visitors kept arriving.

"They say the barrage is as great a miracle as the Pyramids. How many
sluice-gates are there again--a hundred and . . . ?"

"Two hundred and sixteen," said Peer. "Look!" he broke off. "Do you know
those girls over there?" He nodded towards a party of girls in light
dresses who were sitting down at a table close by.

Langberg shook his head. He was greedy for news from the great world
without, which he had never had the luck to see.

"I've often wondered," he went on, "how you managed to come to the front
so in that sort of work--railways and barrages, and so forth--when, your
original line was mechanical engineering. Of course you did do an extra
year on the roads and railway side; but . . ."

Oh, this shining light of the schools!

"What do you say to a glass of champagne?" said Peer. "How do you like
it? Sweet or dry?"

"Why, is there any difference? I really didn't know. But when one's a
millionaire, of course . . ."

"I'm not a millionaire," said Peer with a smile, and beckoned to a
waiter.

"Oh! I heard you were. Didn't you invent a new motor-pump that drove all
the other types out of the field? And besides--that Abyssinian railway.
Oh well, well!" he sighed, "it's a good thing somebody's lucky. The rest
of us shouldn't complain. But how about the other two--Klaus Brock and
Ferdinand Holm? What are they doing now?"

"Klaus is looking after th