"but our ways may not be the same."

She understood, and a newer life leaped up in her. She knew that he
loved her--that was sufficient; the rest would be easier now. Sacrifice,
all, would be easier. To part, yes, and for evermore; but to know that
she had been truly loved--who could rob her of that?

"See," she said lightly, "your people are waiting--and there, why, there
is my cousin Lacey. Tom, oh, Cousin Tom!" she called eagerly.

Lacey rode down on them. "I swan, but I'm glad," he said, as he dropped
from his horse. "Cousin Hylda, I'm blest if I don't feel as if I could
sing like Aunt Melissa."

"You may kiss me, Cousin Tom," she said, as she took his hands in hers.

He flushed, was embarrassed, then snatched a kiss from her cheek. "Say,
I'm in it, ain't I? And you were in it first, eh, Cousin Hylda? The
rest are nowhere--there they come from Assouan, Kaid, Nahoum, and the
Nubians. Look at 'em glisten!"

A hundred of Kaid's Nubians in their glittering armour made three sides
of a quickly moving square, in the centre of which, and a little ahead,
rode Kaid and Nahoum, while behind the square-in parade and gala dress-
trooped hundreds of soldiers and Egyptians and natives.

Swiftly the two cavalcades approached each other, the desert ringing with
the cries of the Bedouins, the Nubians, and the fellaheen. They met on
an upland of sand, from which the wide valley of the Nile and its wild
cataracts could be seen. As men meet who parted yesterday, Kaid, Nahoum,