Hélène Radolin was passing me in her fur. She went into her tent. I sat on, smoking. And presently, outside the dining-tent, I saw Weymouth, his head thrown back, drawing in deep breaths. By the light of the lantern over the tent door he had a look as if inspired by a curious happy wonder. Then he, too, went to his tent. Ten minutes later the madcaps returned, Mrs. Weymouth in front, very quiet; her face, indeed, wore a rather mortified expression, as if she had fallen a little in her own estimation. They went into their tents, and I heard voices a moment to left and right; then the stillness and the powdering light enveloped all. Next day, bored with donkey riding, I walked with the Arabs and saw little of my companions. Weymouth and the Countess, I think, were on the two riding-camels, Radolin and Mrs. Weymouth on their donkeys. We came to the edge of the Fayoum about five o’clock. That camping-ground was narrow. In tents, when jammed together, one can’t avoid hearing at least the tone of neighbouring talk, and I was struck by a certain acrimony in the Weymouth tent. Jessie Weymouth seemed complaining that Frank hadn’t spoken to her all day. “I suppose,” she said, “you didn’t like my running out with Countie last night?” Weymouth’s voice, quite good-humoured, answered: “Oh, not a bit, why should I mind?” By the ensuing silence I seemed to realise that Jessie Weymouth was disappointed. Perhaps I hadn’t really a feeling of suspense that evening, but, in reminiscence, it seems to me I had. Dinner was certainly a disharmonic feast: little Mrs. Weymouth audacious and rueful, Weymouth and the Countess subdued, Radolin artificial, our scoundrel and myself had to make the running. That fellow was needle-sharp, though not always correct in his conclusions. “Mrs. Weymut got a fly in her little eye,” he said to me as I was turning in. “I make it all right to-morrow. I get a dancer at Sennourès. Oho, she is a good one! She make the married couples ’appy. We get some fresh eggs too.” Severe silence in the tents to right and left that night. A whole day’s travelling through the crops of the Fayoum brought us to the camping-ground outside Sennourès, among a grove of palm-trees--charming spot, but lacking the clear, cold spirituality of the desert night. The dancer was certainly ‘a good one.’ What a baggage! All lithe, supple enticement, and jangle of shivering beads! The excitement of the Arabs, the shocked, goggling eyes of Jessie Weymouth--quite a little Puritan when it came to the point--the laughter of our scoundrel, Hélène Radolin’s aloofness, which kept even that daughter of Egypt in her place, were what impressed me during the performance.