CHAPTER IV

EXPLANATIONS


The remaining hours of Jack Ryder's night might be divided into
three periods. There was an interval of astounding exhilaration
coupled with complete mental vacancy, during which a figure in a
Scots costume might have been observed by the astonished Egyptian
moon striding obliviously along the silent road to the Nile, past
sleeping camels and snoring _dhurra_ merchants--a period during
which his sole distinguishable sensation was the memory of
enchanting eyes, of a voice, low and lovely ... of a slender figure
in a muffling tcharchaf ... of the touch of soft lips beneath a
gauzy veil....

This period was succeeded by hours of utter incredulity, in which he
lay wide-eyed on the sleeping porch of McLean's domicile and stared
into the white cloud of his fly net and questioned high heaven and
himself.

Had he really done this? Had he actually caught and kissed this
girl, this girl whose name he did not know, whose face he had never
seen, of whom he knew nothing but that she was the daughter of a
Turk and utterly forbidden by every canon of sanity and
self-preservation?