led; the smooth card
still lay in his hand, the lovely image impressed on it smiled up
at him.

"I don't know but what you are right," he muttered savagely as he
handed it back to Hamilton. "These wives, damn 'em, seem to have no
other mission but to make a man uncomfortable."

He got up and began to pace the room. He seemed to have forgotten
Hamilton and the official _role_ he himself had started to play. He
seemed absorbed in his own thoughts--perhaps memories. Hamilton sat
still, gazing at the card.

Half-an-hour later the interview came to an end. Hamilton went away
to his office with a light heart, and a smile on his lips. The
Commissioner had given him some of his own reminiscences, and
Hamilton had sympathised. The two men had drifted insensibly onto
common ground, and the Commissioner finally had promised to help
Hamilton as far as he could. Hamilton was pleased. That he had
merely been twisting a piece of straw, that would be bent into
quite another shape when Mrs. Commissioner took it in hand, did not
for the moment occur to him. That night Saidie danced for him in
the moonlight, and afterwards ran from him swiftly, playing at
hide-and-seek amongst the roses laughing, inviting his pursuit. In
and out behind the great clumps of boughain-villia gleamed the
lovely form, with hair unbound falling like a mantle to the waist.
Through the pomegranate bushes the laughing face looked out at him,
then swiftly vanished as he approached, and next a laugh and a
flash of warm skin drew him to the bed of lilies where he overtook
her, and they fell laughing on the mossy bank together. Wearied
with dancing and running and laughter, she sank into his arms
gladly, as Eve in the garden of Eden.

"Let us sleep here," she murmured, looking up to the palm branches
over them defined against the lustrous sky.

"See how the lilies sleep round us!"

And that night they slept out in the moonlight.

CHAPTER IV

A month had gone by, and during that month, except for the time he
was with Saidie in the bungalow, Hamilton, had he been less of a
philosopher, would have been extremely uncomfortable.

The Commissioner's wife had completely and entirely espoused the
cause of Mrs. Hamilton, and had insisted on her leaving the hotel
and coming to stay with her. Everywhere that the Commissioner's
wife went, riding or driving, Mrs. Hamilton accompanied her; and
whenever he met the two women, his wife threw him a mild,
reproachfu