Ziska moving with her floating, noiseless grace, Denzil Murray
beside her, the little Nubian boy waving the peacock-plumes in
front of them both, and all the other enslaved admirers of this
singularly attractive woman crowding together behind. He watched
the little cortege with strained, dim sight, till just at the
dividing portal between the lounge and the ballroom the Princess
turned and looked back at him with a smile. Over all the
intervening heads their eyes met in one flash of mutual
comprehension! then, as the fair face vanished like a light
absorbed into the lights beyond it, Gervase, left alone, dropped
heavily into a chair and stared vaguely at the elaborate pattern
of the thick carpet at his feet. Passing his hand across his
forehead he withdrew it, wet with drops of perspiration.

"What is wrong with me?" he muttered. "Am I sickening for a fever
before I have been forty-eight hours in Cairo? What fool's notion
is this in my brain? Where have I seen her before? In Paris? St.
Petersburg? London? Charmazel! ... Charmazel! ... What has the
name to do with me? Ziska-Charmazel! It is like the name of a
romance or a gypsy tune. Bah! I must be dreaming! Her face, her
eyes, are perfectly familiar; where, where have I seen her and
played the mad fool with her before? Was she a model at one of the
studios? Have I seen her by chance thus in her days of poverty,
and does her image recall itself vividly now despite her changed
surroundings? I know the very perfume of her hair ... it seems to
creep into my blood ... it intoxicates me ... it chokes me! ..."

He sprang up with a fierce gesture, then after a minute's pause
sat down again, and again stared at the floor.