"Ay, I will marry Jasper now," she answered. "It has been a long
waiting."

"It could not be till now," she responded.

David looked at her reflectively, and said: "By devious ways the human
heart comes home. One can only stand in the door and wait. He has been
patient."

"I have been patient, too," she answered.

As the Duchess disappeared with David, a swift change came over Lacey.
He spun round on one toe, and, like a boy of ten, careered around the
deck to the tune of a negro song.

"Say, things are all right in there with them two, and it's my turn now,"
he said. "Cute as she can be, and knows the game! Twice a widow, and
knows the game! Waiting, she is down in Cairo, where the orange blossom
blows. I'm in it; we're all in it--every one of us. Cousin Hylda's free
now, and I've got no past worth speaking of; and, anyhow, she'll
understand, down there in Cairo. Cute as she can be--"

Suddenly he swung himself down to the deck below. "The desert's the
place for me to-night," he said. Stepping ashore, he turned to where the
Duchess stood on the deck, gazing out into the night. "Well, give my
love to the girls," he called, waving a hand upwards, as it were to the
wide world, and disappeared into the alluring whiteness.

"I've got to get a key-thought," he muttered to himself, as he walked
swiftly on, till only faint sounds came to him from the riverside. In