way, should know that.”

“Yes—” she agreed. “Yes, of course, I know it.”

Just then young Captain Ramsey claimed her attention. For the next half hour he held it. While the Colonel and Sparky were busy comparing notes on the performance of various types of airplanes, she and Ramsey talked and laughed as they compared notes on the lives they had lived before the war descended upon them.

“It will never be the same,” she sighed at last.

“Of course it won’t,” he agreed. “But do you really wish it?”

“I—I don’t know,” she hesitated.

“Of course you don’t. None of us does. We’ve been whirled completely out of that world. When we get back, if we do—” his voice fell, “then’s the only time we’ll really know what we want. That’s why I say, ‘forget the post-war problems. Let’s get on with the war.’ We—”

“Look!” She gripped his arm. “There’s an Arab. The head-waiter is bringing him this way. Oh, I’m scared.”

“Arabs are harmless enough.” He gave her a questioning look.

“Not all who pass as Arabs are harmless,” she insisted. There was no time for explaining. The Arab, with the head-waiter at his elbow, had arrived at their table.

CHAPTER IX A ROLL OF PAPYRUS

CHAPTER IX

A ROLL OF PAPYRUS

“I tried to tell him, sir, that it was not right that he should come in,” the polite waiter apologized to the Colonel, Mary’s father. “I said it is not convenient, it is not allowed, but he would come.”

“It’s all right, Pierre,” the Colonel spoke quietly. “What is it you wish?” He turned to the Arab.

“Oh! Sir, if you knew.” The Arab spoke English without a flaw. “You are interested in Egypt, all her past,—”

“Yes, yes, I know, but—”

“It is this.” The man drew something from beneath his robe. Both Sparky and Ramsey half rose in their places, then settled back for, the Arab’s fingers, long and thin, held what appeared to be a roll of paper.

Taking the roll, the Colonel removed the outer layer of green 

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