honoured."

"But that makes no difference," she interposed. "Here is coffee--ah,
that's right, cigarettes too! But, yes, you will take my coffee, Pasha,"
she urged.

The insolent look which had gathered in the man's face cleared away. He
salaamed, hesitated, and took the coffee, then salaamed again to her.

She had caught at a difficulty; an instinctive sense of peril had taken
possession of her; and, feeling that the danger was for the Englishman
who had come to her out of her old life, she had interposed a diplomatic
moment. She wanted to gain time before the mystery broke over her. She
felt something at stake for herself. Premonition, a troubling of the
spirit, told her that she was in the presence of a crisis out of which
she would not come unchanged.

Dicky was talking now, helping her--asking the Pasha questions of his
journey up the river, of the last news from Europe, of the Khedive's
health, though he and Kingsley had only left Cairo a half-day before the
Pasha.

The officer thanked the lady and salaamed again, then turned towards
Kingsley.

"You wished to speak with me, perhaps, Pasha," said Kingsley.

"If a moment of your time may have so little honour, saadat el bey."

Kingsley moved down the veranda shoulder to shoulder with the Pasha, and