he
Camel King, who, standing alone and motionless with folded arms, let
his eyes rest upon this most fair woman from the West.

Jill was accustomed to being looked at, from the impudent stare of
Frenchmen, the open look of admiration, both male and female, of the
Italian, to the never-to-be-forgotten look of Berlin that had seemed to
undress and leave her naked in the street.

But now under grave scrutiny she felt the colour, which made her even
more lovely, rising from chin to brow, and longed to cover her face or
to run away and hide, though there was nothing but a wondering respect
in the Arab's eyes.

For one moment his eyes met hers, then she slowly lowered the heavy
white lids with their fringe of curling lashes, and, turning, stood
looking out over the desert, where she no longer saw the stretches of
yellow sand, nor the airing of camels stalking away into the distance,
nor the mud houses and patient bullocks. No! nothing of all these, but
instead, just one man's face, oval, lean-featured, eyes brilliantly
black and deep-set under thick eyebrows, an aquiline nose, the lower
part of the face covered in a sharp pointed beard, and the thick virile
hair by a snow-white kahleelyah, bound by a band to the well-shaped
head.

A man was he indeed with a width of shoulder rarely seen in an Arab,
standing well over six foot, in spotless white robes sweeping to his
feet, a cloak of finest black cloth falling over all in swinging folds,
failing, however, to hide that look of tremendous strength which
impresses one so in some of the long-limbed, lean, muscular inhabitants
of the desert.

Jill walked over to the edge of the platform which, as a rule is only
raised a few inches above the rail, and after a few seconds beckoned
her employer's special dragoman, who had annexed himself at Cairo and
presumably would only be shaken off on deck.

He came immediately, all smiles.

All the so-called lower classes smiled upon Jill, from the coster in
Whitechapel to the Kaffir at the Cape. And why? Why, because she
smiled when she asked a service.

"Be more dignified!" she would indignantly reply when remonstrated with
about the native. "They certainly show a varied degree of blackness in
their skin, and have less brains than some of us, but they are human,
so I shall continue to smile if I like," and smile she did, and they
smiled too and ran to do her bidding.

Not that she indulged in the "our dear black brother" views o