"Dear Jinny--I had to leave last night and take a girl home--"

No, she would ask about the girl. Jinny had a propensity for
locating people. It wouldn't do.

His masculine instinct for saying the least possible in a matter
with a woman, and his ripening experience which taught him to leave
no mystery to awaken suspicion, wrestled with the affair for some
time and then retired from the field.

He compromised by telephoning Jinny briefly--and Jinny was equally
as brief and twice as cool and cryptic--and promising to take her
out to tea.

He reflected that if he took her to tea he would really have to stay
over another night, for it would be too late to regain his desert
camp. But the circumstances seemed to call for some social amend....
And no matter how many nights he stayed he certainly was not going
to lurk about that lane, outside garden doors!

He must have been mad, stark, staring, March-hatter mad!

* * * * *

That morning, during its remainder, he concluded his buying of
supplies and saw to their shipment upon the boat that left upon the
following morning. That noon he lunched with an assistant curator of
the Cairo museum who found him a good listener.