weekly steamer from Cairo, gaily lit and filled with Europeans, was lying at the landing-stage. Hearing the song which the trio in rhythmic unison took up, a dozen or so Europeans in evening dress crowded to the side to see who was passing.

Lola, delighted, hailed them in English. They shouted back merry greetings, and then Ali, their boatman, tacked again, and they were soon sailing straight for the long, dark river-bank, where one or two lights showed like fireflies among the palms, until they reached the darkly-lit landing-stage on Elephantine, that little island whence, in the dim ages of the Sixth Dynasty, sprang the Kings of Egypt, where the ancient gods, Khnemu, Sati, and Anuquet were worshipped, and where the Pharaoh, Amenophis III, built a temple. Upon the site where the orgies of Hathor were enacted is to-day the modern Savoy, where one can obtain a whisky-and-soda or a well-mixed “Martini.” Other times, other manners.

On landing, Waldron and Lola strolled together along the moonlit, gravelled path beside the river, and presently sat beneath a great flowering oleander amid the thousand perfumes of that glorious tropical garden with its wealth of blossom.

He noted that she had suddenly grown grave and silent. Some people were sitting upon a seat near, laughing gaily and chattering in English, though in the deep shadow of the perfumed night they could not be seen. At their feet the broad Nile waters lapped lazily, while from a native boat in mid-stream came the low, rhythmic beating of a tom-tom as the rowers bent to their oars.

“You seem very melancholy,” remarked her companion suddenly. “Why?”

“I—melancholy?” she cried in her broken English, suddenly starting. “I—I really did not know, m’sieur. Oh, please forgive me.”

“No, I will not,” he said with mock reproach.

“You mustn’t be sad when I am with you.”

“But I’m not sad, I assure you,” she declared. And then, noticing that he was taking a cigarette from his case, she begged one.

Lola seldom, if ever, smoked in public, nevertheless she was passionately fond of those mild aromatic cigarettes which one gets in such perfection in Egypt, and often when with her friend, the cosmopolitan diplomat, she would indulge in one.

She hated the conventions which so often she set at naught—thus earning the reputation of a tomboy, so full of life and vivacity was she.

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