"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 her as she plodded on, so
that it was with a feeling of relief that she espied "Cuisine
Francaise" written across the window of a fairly clean-looking
restaurant in a small street, into which place she turned, to be
confronted by a fat, oily individual hailing from the Levant, who
looked as though his business was anything but that of the kitchen.