"You very much are," answered Dicky, thrust a cigar at him, and set him down in the deepest chair he could find. He sprawled wide, and lighted his cigar, then lay back and looked down his long nose at his friend. "I mean it, too," he said after a minute, and reached for a glass of water the waiter brought. "No, thanks, no whiskey--never touch it--good example to the slaves!" He laughed long and low, and looked at Dicky out of the corner of his eye. "Good-looking lot I sent you, eh?" "Oosters, every one of 'em. Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. I learnt their grin, it suits my style of beauty." Dicky fitted the action to the word. "You'll start with me in the morning to Assiout?" "I can start, but life and time are short." "You think I can't and won't marry her?" "This isn't the day of Lochinvar." "This is the day of Kingsley Bey, Dicky Pasha." Dicky frowned. He had a rare and fine sense where women were concerned, were they absent or present. "How very artless--and in so short a time, too!" he said tartly. Kingsley laughed quietly. "Art is long, but tempers are short!" he retorted. Dicky liked a Roland for his Oliver. "It's good to see you back again," he said, changing the subject. "How long do you mean to stay?" "Here?" Dicky nodded. "Till I'm married." Dicky became very quiet, a little formal, and his voice took on a curious smoothness, through which sharp suggestion pierced. "So long?--Enter our Kingsley Bey into the underground Levantine world." This was biting enough. To be swallowed up by Cairo life and all that it involves, was no fate to suggest to an Englishman, whose opinion of the Levantine needs no defining. "Try again, Dicky," said Kingsley, refusing to be drawn. "This is not one huge joke, or one vast impertinence, so far as the lady is concerned. I've come back-b-a-c-k" (he spelled the word out), "with all that it involves. I've come back, Dicky."