e? Do you like my country?"

He leaned a little forward as at last he broke their silence, and the
movement, and his present attitude, drew her attention to the breadth of
his mighty shoulders and to the arresting poise of his head, a poise
that, had it been only a shade less bold, would have been almost
touchingly gallant.

"Have you seen all the interesting things in Thebes and Karnak?"

"Yes. We've been quite good tourists. We've been to the Colossi, the
tombs, the temples. We've dined by moonlight on the top of the Pylon at
Karnak. We've seen sunset from Deir-al-Bahari."

"And sunrise?"

"From nowhere. I prefer to sleep in the morning."

"And do you care about all these things, tombs, temples,
mummies--madame? Have you enjoyed your Egyptian life?"

She paused before answering the question. As a fact, she had often
enjoyed her expeditions with Nigel in the bright and shimmering gaiety
of the exquisite climate of Luxor; the picnic lunches out in the open,
or within the walls of some mighty ruin; the smart canters on the
straight brown paths between the waving green prairies or crops, above
which the larks sang and the wild pigeons flew up to form the only cloud
in the triumph of gold and of blue; the long climbs upward into the
mountains along the tiger-coloured ways, where the sun had made his
empire since the beginning of the world; the descents when day was
declining, when the fellahin went homewards under the black velvet of
the palm-trees, and the dust stirred by their brown and naked feet rose
up in spirals towards the almost livid light of the afterglow. And she
had enjoyed the dinner at Karnak in the pale beams of a baby moon. For
she still had the power to enjoy, and much of the physical energy of the
average Englishwoman, who is at home in the open air and quite at her
ease in the saddle. And Egypt was for her a complete novelty, and a
novelty bringing health, and a feeling almost of youth.

Nevertheless, she paused before replying.

Secretly, during all these days she was now considering, she had been as
one who walks in a triumph. She had been exulting in the _coup_ she had
made just when her life seemed turning to greyness, exulting in the blow
she had struck against a society which had despised her and cast her
out. Exultation had coloured her days. Now suddenly, unexpectedly, she
knew she had been living in a fool's paradise, into which Nigel had led
her. And this knowledge fell, like a great