the street. It was my first glimpse of her and hers of me, although we had known one another since the autumn. She wore the white veil that goes over the ears and which meets the black dress, or habara, but she had chosen one so transparent that I could catch the outline of her face below the eyes and brow, and even the curves and color of her small, red mouth. A little aquiline her nose was, but only a suggestion. And she was slim and of middle height and very delicate about the hands and feet. Exquisitely gloved and shod she was, and exquisitely clean and neat all over, as these women always are when they come of a good family. She stepped through the gate and stood on the curb below me, and, speaking in Arabic before the servants, she said very slowly and rather shyly: 'You will drive along the road that leads to the Pyramids. I wish to smell the air.' And all the time she was looking into my face and searching, as much as to say, 'So this is he?'

"The eunuch Hamouda gave her his hand; she lifted one little foot and then another. Hamouda then climbed beside me on the box, a tall, lean, bony Nubian, with tarboosh and frockcoat, elastic side boots, and a big gold watch-chain. I felt like throwing him overboard and driving away with Ziba; but that was not very feasible, and I gave the word to my two ponies, and off we went to 'smell the air' along the Pyramids road.

"Other carriages passed us. In some I had acquaintances, but no one recognized me; for it never occurred to them to look at the coachman, but always at the occupant. Even Taher and his French artiste went by without a sign; but they were too much bent on

seeing and being seen by the European world and could not condescend to a mere Moslem lady in a coupé.

"Once or twice I looked round, and Ziba was nibbling my chocolates; and, 'Wait a little,' she said later; 'we will give the horses a rest.' Hamouda, the eunuch, sat impassive, his long legs hunched up, his hairless face turning neither to the right nor to the left. Several times, in his high, piping voice, he spoke to me, asking me the name of my town, how long I had been in Cairo, and why their usual coachman was not on duty? He was sick, I explained. I did not encourage Hamouda. I wore the same dress as our other men, and was tanned and dark; but the character of my face is not Egyptian, now, is it?”

"Hardly," I agreed with him. "No, it certainly is n't Egyptian.”

He continued:

"Ziba's eyes had been in the small of my back throughout that drive as she sat munching the chocolates or putting one of the roses to her yashmak; and I had seen little enough of her, except in the few times when I had turned to take her orders. Always she spoke in Arabic, but when we came again to the Taher palace and it was time to separate, disregarding the ungainly Hamouda, she stepped out of the carriage, and, stopping for a moment as though to look at my ponies, she turned her bright eyes full on me, and, finding her words in English, 'You are all sweetness,' she said; and, 'You are like pearls and rubies,' I answered. Then, ‘Aiwa, ya sitt,' I added, for the servants were listening. She turned, my flowers in her hand, and went into the house. But after all those weeks we had seen each other, and each of us was pleased with the discovery."

86

Vignolles had paused here to dwell for a moment on that far-off recollection. He refilled his glass, lit another cigar, and watched the smoke dissolve as it rose between us.

I waited for him, and I could well picture the Vignolles of those days; not yet thirty, tall and dark and slender, a handsome fellow, if ever there was one, and not a bit spoilt, and easy and a trifle thoughtful. He had lived; even then he had seen much of the world and known its difficulties and disillusions: but, as he himself had said, he was young, and he had always been possessed by an urging spirit of adventure. Such, then, was the man who had captivated this lovely Moslem woman. I could see her, too, with her exquisite grace, her eagerness, and entire remoteness from our Western world, where women run free, a creature sheltered, ignorant, and yet delightful, with a depth, maybe, an intensity, in those few matters that she could call her own. A simple directness, perhaps, a certain savagery. I don't know how I came to these conclusions, but there she stood.

"And that was all?" I prompted. "Not by any means," he replied. "That was only the beginning. She was at the telephone next morning," he pursued. "She had not slept all night, and when she heard my voice, 'I love you,' she said; 'do you love me?' "I answered her quite honestly, but it all looked hopeless; for there were the eunuchs; there was that guarded house. But there was a way.

"I have a friend, a Christian friend,' she added, 'Madame Sangrano. She is Italian and a widow. She lives at a little house in Zeitoun. She gives me

music lessons when I am not too lazy. I will send to her, and then you must find her house, and I can meet you there. I will send to her to-day.'

"I went to Zeitoun the very next evening. It is a suburb of Cairo, a place full of little villas set in gardens; and there I found the villa of Madame Sangrano, a dark and rather oily Maltese woman of about forty, who lived with a Syrian servant girl, a wild, Gipsy-like creature, without shoes or stockings, and all of whose clothing looked like coming to pieces.

"Madame Sangrano was expecting me. We sat in her little garden, with its gourds and purple bougainvillea, its shrubs and mosquitos, and its runnels of water, and with the first star in the sky.

"You will come alone,' she arranged it, 'and Madame Taher will follow. She may as well make me a visit as anybody else, and she can say she has come to see me about her music. You will pay me one pound Egyptian. It is very little.'

"All that was agreed. I would have agreed to anything. Two days later Ziba rang me up and told me that at six o'clock in the evening she would be at Zeitoun. I closed my office early and took the train. She came by road in one of our carriages.

"I was drinking my first cup of tea with the stout Maltese who called herself an Italian when Ziba was announced, and the Syrian servant girl showed her in to us. Outside stood the coupé with its two Arabs, and with Hamouda, the black eunuch, seated on the box. One could see them through the window. They had their orders to come back in an hour. At last Madame Sangrano withdrew and left us to ourselves. It was only then

that Ziba removed her veil, the white yashmak that was fastened to her ears, and let me see her face and the firm, full neck, with the blue veins that marked the whiteness of the transparent skin below. I have never known a woman more beautiful, tenderer, more complete. She was nothing else but woman, and mine-mine so utterly as she quivered in the arms that held her close. She was risking her life to be with me. Can any woman do more? I loosened the hood that covered her head, I took the black habara from her shoulders and drew her clear of it. She was in a dress of thinnest gauze now, flowered with silver. She had smooth hair like silk, of a pale brown, and small, pink feet, the color of rosebuds. Time fled with her, and when the carriage had waited a second hour, she tore herself away, and I was left alone with Madame Sangrano and the Syrian maid-servant. Romantic creatures both, I could have bashed their heads together.

"Next morning early I was back at the office, rubbing my eyes and wondering whether it all had been a dream. But it was no dream; for soon she was cooing softly in the telephone. I wonder whether anybody heard us at the exchange. We were mad, utterly and gloriously mad, the two of us, that morning twenty-something years ago.

"A curious double life began for us. Outwardly, we lived in our respective worlds; I, with my horses and stables and Gyppo drivers, and Marini coming in to collect the money and flatter me for the great success I had made of it; and she, secluded in her harem beyond Bab Ul Luk. But once or twice a week we could steal off and meet in secret at the Maltese woman's villa. Those hours were the realities of our

two lives; the rest, illusion and a dream. Sometimes we looked ahead, trying to arrive at a future; but in truth we were two children caught up in a net. We made plans to escape it.

"The mother-in-law had come back from her visit to Alexandria, Taher's own horses were recovered, and a second coupé was no longer required. Our meetings became more difficult.

"I will pay a Greek to stab my husband,' Ziba once proposed, 'and then you can take me to England.'

"I, too, thought of an elopement, and I could hardly have been quite mad when I faced the question of flight with her; for I could never see her and think of her as living amid the cold and wet of the sunless North. And one day I said to her, 'You would be unhappy with me there; only a rich man could take you to Europe and give you the life to which you are accustomed.' She was so helpless and so remote from our material struggles and our strange society of women who are much like men and move quite freely in the world! And of money she knew nothing; she had always had her swarm of servants, her horses, her carriages; all her luxurious wants had been fulfilled. At the thought of her managing a poor man's house in England, the slave to duties and the life we others lead, I knew it was impossible. Ziba was made for loving and being loved; to charm, to fascinate, to touch the senses. That had been her education, the end to which she and all of her kind had been directed.

"If I had ten thousand a year,' I said at last, 'we might be happy even in Europe.'

"Malish,' she said, nestling closer to me; 'it does not matter.'

"One thing I remember very forcibly about her was her strange ignorance of all that concerned her own people, and even of the very city she dwelt in and where she had spent her life. I spoke to her of the great mosques, of my previous prowlings and explorations. She had seen nothing of this side of the town, knew nothing of its history or of its monuments.

"But the Sultan Hasan Mosque is like you,' I said. 'It is perfect; so beautiful that I uttered a cry when I found it.' And, in truth, there was between them a certain resemblance. All that flesh and blood could give, she could give. The perfection of line and curve that had so awed me in that masterpiece was hers; and it had never known the sadness, the suffering, which pierces with mystery and transfigures our Western shrines.

"March came, and then April and the beginning of the hot weather. The French artiste departed after a highly successful season, and Taher Bey was left alone. He played cards most of the night in his club or in his selamlik, and though a Turk and so proud of it, he began to dabble in Egyptian politics. With us he did not interfere. But once or twice we had been careless, and there were always those eyes on us-the eyes of servants, the eyes of all that silent throng who live by the will and desires of their master. There is no mystery in the East with all those people watching, and to me, the interloper, they would be more than hostile. There was Abdul, our head man, religious and fanatical. Sometimes I wondered what he knew as his eyes followed me those afternoons when I escaped; and perhaps Hamouda, the eunuch, too,

had his suspicions. Twice I had been delayed, arriving late at Madame Sangrano's villa, and had passed the carriage as it waited.

"One day Ziba rang me up, and I went to the telephone.

"I fear I fear everything!' she cried. "Taher has been told. You must pay a Greek to kill him. But quick!'

"Some one must have interrupted her, for that was all. After it there fell a silence. I waited and I waited; day after day went by, and I heard no more. And the great heat came, and the sand-storms that mark the turning of the year. The tourists had all departed; Cairo was emptying. Ziba would have sent me word had she, too, gone. I called on Madame Sangrano. She could gain admission to the house and find out what had happened. I begged her to do so. She promised, and named her price; she was a rare old bloodsucker. I lingered for a space in her low, squat villa, with the two rooms she had left clear for us all haunted by the presence of the woman who now seemed lost. It hurt me to be there; it hurt me to be idle. Madame Sangrano promised to call on me in a few days and give me news.

"When she came, I was alone, and she sat down in the chair in my office reserved for customers.

"I have bad news,' she began. "I knew that; I had a premonition. ""Taher Bey has found us out, and Madame Taher is gone. They say she has been poisoned, but who will ever know? I have it from a woman of her household. That is all I can tell you. It is dangerous to meddle with these Moslem women, most dangerous. Hamouda, the eunuch, must have spied on us. It has cost me money to