Let him think that you are laughing at him, and I should advise you to take the nearest camel, train, or boat, or any other means of locomotion to hand, and fly the country. The _country_ mind you, for hide you ever so craftily, he will find you, even though your hair be white, and your figure bent with the passage of years, and then, only _then_ will he be appeased, when the real or imagined jest at his expense has been lost in the deep colour of your rich red blood. So that when the Arab spoke a light of understanding dawned upon Jill, for, touching his forehead, mouth, and a spot on his raiment just above his heart with his right hand, and murmuring the customary salutation, "May peace be upon you," he paused for a moment, and then continued, "But it pleases Madame to jest with me. She awaits the train to take her to the boat, how therefore could she come into the desert to-night?" But Jill was absolutely unafraid! Having known no master, she cared not one _sou_ for any son of man, or any untoward position she might find herself in, so opening wide her very beautiful eyes she simply smiled back into the angry ones which looked down upon her from some considerable height, and, with a little shrug of her shoulders, a habit acquired from one of a succession of foreign governesses, she made reply in her turn, and in words which though absolutely common-place served as the golden key with which to unlock the bejewelled, golden casket of this man's love. In any Western country the situation would have been _absurd_! An English girl, minus scenery and every accessory due to a book heroine, capable in five brief minutes of smiting the heart of one of Egypt's most renowned men! Ridiculous! Perhaps in the lands of fogs and fires, grey skies and east winds, but not in Egypt, where the sun, sky, winds, and memories serve rather to force the growth of the love-plant and hasten the budding of the passion-flower. Studiously buttoning up the last button which she always left undone on her last pair of suede gloves, smooth as a newly born whippet puppy, and as yet unruffled from the cleaner's manipulations, she spoke with a ripple of laughter which made it impossible to decide if she was speaking seriously or not. "Madame permits herself to do just as she pleases. If by some unforeseen circumstances she were to miss the train, would she be taken to see the oasis, and the horses, and the stars?" And let it be understood that, in her utter ignorance of deserts, she imagined the oasis could be reached after a journey of a few hours. For one moment there was dead silence between these two, the strings of whose lives Fate was inextricably mixing in her fingers, palsied by age, and fretted by the constant tugging and straining of those other threads which, in moments of senile anger or childishness, she gets into such hopeless tangles.