a touch of the sun, Aubrey," she replied, with uplifted eyebrows,
drumming impatiently with her fingers on the table.

"Don't quibble. You know perfectly well that you are good-looking--too
good-looking to carry through this preposterous affair."

"Will you please tell me what you are driving at?" she asked quietly.
But the dark blue eyes fixed on her brother's face were growing darker
as she looked at him.

"I've been doing some hard thinking to-day, Diana. This tour you
propose is impossible."

"Isn't it rather late in the day to find that out?" she interrupted
sarcastically; but he ignored the interruption.

"You must see for yourself, now that you are face to face with the
thing, that it is impossible. It's quite unthinkable that you can
wander for the next month all alone in the desert with those damned
niggers. Though my legal guardianship over you terminated last
September I still have some moral obligations towards you. Though it
has been convenient to me to bring you up as a boy and to regard you in
the light of a younger brother instead of a sister, we cannot get away
from the fact that you are a woman, and a very young woman. There are
certain things a young woman cannot do. If you had been the boy I
always wished you were it would have been a different matter, but you
are not a boy, and the whole thing is impossible--utterly impossible."
There was a fretful impatience in his voice.

Diana lit a cigarette slowly, and swung round on her chair with a hard