“We have to take food and water,” the engineer explained to Waldron with a laugh. “Good night.”

“Good night—and good luck,” shouted Hubert, as the train moved off, and a strong, bare arm waved him farewell.

Then after he had watched the red tail-light disappear over the sandy waste he turned, and wondering what skeleton of the past that exile held concealed in his cupboard, strode along the river-bank beneath the belt of palms.

How many Englishmen abroad are self-exiles? How full of bitterness is many a man’s heart in our far-off Colonies? And how many good, sterling fellows are wearily dragging out their monotonous lives, just because of “the woman”? Does she remember? does she care? She probably still lives her own life in her own merry circle—giddy and full of a modern craving for constant excitement. She has, in most cases, conveniently forgotten the man she wronged—forgotten his existence, perhaps even his very name.

And how many men, too, have stood by and allowed their lives to be wrecked for the purpose of preserving a woman’s good name. But does the woman ever thank him? Alas! but seldom—very seldom.

True, the follies of life are mostly the man’s. But the woman does not always pay—as some would have us believe.

Waldron, puffing thoughtfully at his cigar, his thoughts far away from the Nile—for he was recalling a certain evening in Madrid when he had sat alone with Beatriz in her beautiful flat in the Calle de Alcalâ—had passed through the darkness of the palms, and out upon the path which still led beside the wide river, towards the Second Cataract.

From the shadows of the opposite shore came the low beating of a tom-tom and the Arab boatman’s chant—that rather mournful chant one hears everywhere along the Nile from the Nyanza to the sea, and which ends in “Al-lah-hey! Al-lah-hey!” Allah! Always the call to Allah.

The sun—the same sun god that was worshipped at Abu Simbel—had gone long ago, tired Nubia slept in peace, and the stars that gazed down upon her fretted not the night with thoughts of the creeds of men.

Again Hubert Waldron reached another small clump of palms close to the water’s edge, and as he passed noiselessly across the sand he suddenly became conscious that he was not alone.

Voices in French broke the silence, and he suddenly halted.

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