is long hair could no longer
sustain his failing energies. He expired magnificently, the seventh
rhapsody of Liszt serving as his bier. Lady Betty came out into the
garden.

"How unmusical you two are," she said; "his playing was exquisite."

"We heard finer music here," Clarice answered, as she got up to go back
to the dahabeeyah--"did we not?"

She turned to Bellairs. He was looking at Lady Betty and did not hear.
Clarice's cheek flushed angrily.

"Come, Betty," she exclaimed. "Good-night, Mr Bellairs."

"Good-night, Mr Bellairs," echoed Lady Betty.

The two women moved away, and vanished down the narrow and dusty avenue
that leads to the bank of the Nile. Bellairs stood looking after them.
He was wondering why he loved Betty and did not love Clarice. It seemed
feeble to love an echo. Yet, the intonation of an echo is sometimes
exquisite in its trilling vagueness, its far-off, thrilling beauty. And
Bellairs fancied that if he once wakened Betty to passion he would free
her, in a moment, from her curious bondage, would give to her the soul
that Clarice must surely have crushed down and expelled, replacing it
with a replica of her own soul. And then he asked himself, being
analytically inclined that night, what he adored in Betty. Was it merely
her fresh young beauty? It could not be her nature; for that, at
present, was merely Clarice's, and he did not love the nature of
Clarice. Yet he felt it was something more than her beauty. When he had
made her love him he would know; for, when he had made her love him, he
would force her to be herself.

He watched the bats circling among the shadowy palms. How gentle the air
was. How sweet the stars looked. Bellairs thought of England that was so
far away. It seemed impossible that he could ever be in London again,
ever again assume a Piccadilly nature, and laugh at the folly of having
a romance. Yes, it seemed impossible. Nevertheless, in a fortnight he
must go. But he would take Betty's promise with him. He was resolved on
that. And then he left the silent garden to the bats, and was soon
between the mosquito curtains, dreaming.

* * * * *

Three days afterwards Clarice was prostrated with a nervous headache.
She could not bear to have any one in her cabin, and Lady Betty sat on
the deck of the _Queen Hatasoo_ quite inconsolable. Bellairs, arriving
to pay his usual afternoon call, found her there. Lord Braydon was out,
sailing in a fla