g-room just as the
engine announced its immediate departure.

Without a qualm she watched "her crowd" jostle and push their way into
the small carriages, and the train, move out, leaving her alone--alone
in the desert town, alone with the dweller of that desert.

A wave of exultation rushed through her as she thought of this her
great adventure, of this her freedom for at least a short while, and of
the unknown quantity she was mixing into her portion of daily bread
which, up to this moment, had consisted of the plainest, wholesomest,
most uninteresting bun-loaf, not even resembling that extremely dull
and unappetising cake named, I believe, Swiss roll, which hides its
staleness under the glass case of Life's shop window, lying fly-blown
on the plate and heavily and unimaginatively on the digestive powers of
those who consume it for the thin layer of jam to be discovered between
its wedges of sullen dough. A soul-stifling mess to be found in the
drab sideboards of most English households along with its sister made
of a pastry so flimsy that it chokes, filled with a cream that is
merely froth, the whole hiding its cheapness under an application of
highly coloured paint essence, the consuming of which will prove as
fatal as the Swiss roll.

So she raised her hands to the grimy ceiling of the dirty waiting-room
and whispered to the dust, the buzzing flies, and vivid ray of sunlight,

"Verily, and indeed I have burned my boats behind, or perhaps I should
say my liner before me!"

CHAPTER VI

Jill, very fair indeed to look upon, and with seven-and-sixpence in odd
money in her bag, stepped out bravely on to the road, scorched by the
midday sun, with a curl at the corner of her mouth, a medley of
disconnected thoughts in her madcap head, and a feeling of unromantic
emptiness somewhere in the vicinity of her white leather waist belt.

A wisp of a boy, clad in very dirty garments, shrilled the equivalent
of "Carry your bag, miss," in the Egyptian tongue, calling down the
displeasure of Allah upon the foreign woman when she shook her head,
and changed the heavy dressing-case to the other hand.

Ismailiah is no place for a beautiful English girl to wander in
unchaperoned, especially when out of respect to the slenderness of her
purse she gets off the beaten track in search of a cheap restaurant.

Indeed Jill was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable at the way the
natives stared and even turned to look after he