strations.

"Do you really like it all?" he asked, as Stephen looked out from a
barred window of the loggia, over the wide view.

"I never even imagined anything so fantastically beautiful," Stephen
returned warmly. "You ought to be happy, even if you could never go
outside your own house and gardens. There's nothing to touch this on the
Riviera. It's a palace of the 'Arabian Nights.'"

"There was a palace in the 'Arabian Nights,' if you remember," said
Nevill, "where everything was perfect except one thing. Its master was
miserable because he couldn't get that thing."

"The Roc's egg, of Aladdin's palace," Stephen recalled. "Do you lack a
Roc's egg for yours?"

"The equivalent," said Nevill. "The one thing which I want, and don't
seem likely to get, though I haven't quite given up hope. It's a woman.
And she doesn't want me--or my palace. I'll tell you about her some
day--soon, perhaps. And maybe you'll see her. But never mind my troubles
for the moment. I can put them out of my mind with comparative ease, in
the pleasure of welcoming you. Now we'll go indoors. You haven't an idea
what the house is like yet. By the way, I nearly forgot this chap."

He put his hand into the pocket of his grey flannel coat, and pulled out
a green frog, wrapped in a lettuce leaf which was inadequate as a
garment, but a perfect match as to colour.

"I bought him on the way down to meet you," Nevill explained. "Saw an
Arab kid trying to sell him in the street, poor little beast. Thought it
would be a friendly act to bring him here to join my happy family, which
is large and varied. I don't remember anybody living in this fountain
who's likely to eat him, or be eaten by him."

Down went the frog on the wide rim of the marble fountain, and sat
there, meditatively, with a dawning expression of contentment, so
Stephen fancied, on his green face. He looked, Stephen thought, as if he
were trying to forget a troubled past, and as if his new home with all
its unexplored mysteries of reeds and lily pads were wondrously to his
liking.

"I wish you'd name that person after me," said Stephen. "You're being
very good to both of us,--taking us out of Hades into Paradise."

"Come along in," was Nevill Caird's only answer. But he walked into the
house with his hand on Stephen's shoulder.

IX

Djenan El Djouad was a labyrinth. Stephen Knight abandoned all attempt
at keeping a mental clue before he had reached the drawing-room. Nevill