ert, pale and vague in the windy morning, grew more
distinct, more full of summons; the orifice that was the end of the
avenue gaped like a mouth that opens more widely. A line of donkeys
appeared, with here and there a white camel with tasselled trappings,
surrounded by groups of shouting Egyptians, who stared at the carriage
with avaricious eyes. "Ah--ah!" shouted the coachman. The horses broke
into a gallop, turned into a garden on the right, and drew up before the
Mena House.

A minute later Mrs. Armine was standing on a terrace that ended in a sea
of pale yellow sand. Nigel followed her, but only after some minutes.

"You seem to know everybody here," she said to him, in a slightly
constrained voice, as he came to stand beside her.

"Well, there are several fellows from Cairo come here to spend Sunday."

"With their wives apparently."

"Yes, some of them. Of course last winter I got to know a good many
people. It's much warmer here. We get all the sun, and there's much less
wind. And isn't the Great Pyramid grand?"

He took her gently by the arm.

"The Sphinx is beyond. I want you to see that for the first time just
before nightfall, Ruby."

"Whatever you like," she said.

Her voice still sounded constrained. On the veranda and in the hall of
the hotel she had had to run the gauntlet, and now that she was married
again, and had abandoned the defiant life which she had led for so many
years, somehow she had become less careless of opinion, of the hostility
of women, than she had formerly been. She wished to be accepted again.
As Lady Harwich she could have forced people to accept her.

As she looked at the Great Pyramid, she was saying that to herself, and
Nigel's words about the Sphinx fell upon inattentive ears. Although he
did not know it, in bringing her to Mena House just at this moment he
had taken a step that was unwise. But he was walking in the dark.

At lunch in the great Arabic hall officers from the garrisons of Cairo
and Abbassieh, and their womenkind, were in great force. Acquaintances
of Nigel's sat at little tables to the right and left of them. In other
parts of the room were scattered various well-known English people, who
stared at Mrs. Armine when they chose to imagine she did not see them.
Not far off Lord and Lady Hayman and the Murchisons reappeared.

A more effective irritant to Mrs. Armine's temper and nerves at this
moment than this collection of people afforded could scarcely