In a big, cane lounge-chair packed with cushions she curled up luxuriously and began to reflect. Her reflections, it is needless to say, centred around Severac Bablon. Why, she asked herself, despite his deeds, did she admire and respect him? Her mind refused to face the problem, but she felt a hot blush rise to her cheeks. She was a traitor to her father; she could not deny it. But at any rate she was a frank traitor, if such a state be possible. Only that morning she had explained her position to him. "Severac Bablon," she had maintained, "only makes you rich men do what you ought to do with some of your money! Even if the object weren't a good one, even were it a ridiculous one, like making Dutchmen and Americans buy British airships, it does make you _spend_ something. And that's a change!" Mr. Oppner was used to these outspoken critcisms from his daughter. He had smiled grimly, wryly. "I guess," had been his comment, "you'd stand up for the Bablon man, then, if he ever came your way?" "Sure!" Zoe had cried. "You spend too much on me, and on Pinkertons, and not enough on people who really want it." "You ought to join the staff of the _Gleaner_, Zoe! They specialise in that brand of junk, and they're in the popular market at the moment, too. They'll win the next election hands down, I'm told." "Why don't you start a fund for Canadian emigrants?" Zoe had proceeded. "You've made a heap of money out of Canada. Then you wouldn't have to buy any airships, maybe!" "I don't have to! No Roman Emperor was watched closer'n me! If that guy gets me held up he's earnin' his money! Zoe, you're a durned unnatural daughter!" The thought of that conversation made her smile. To her it seemed so ridiculous that her father should guard his expenditure like one who has but a few dollars between himself and starvation. The gold fever was an incomprehensible disease to the daughter of the man who was more savagely bitten with it than almost any other living plutocrat. Musing upon these matters, Zoe slept, and dreamed. She dreamed that she stood in the gateway of an ancient city, amid a throng of people attired in the picturesque garb of the East. About her, the city was _en fete_. Before her stretched the desert, an undulating ocean of greyness, a dry ocean parched by a merciless sun. Barbaric music sounded; the clashing of cymbals and quiver of strange instruments rendering it unlike any music she had ever heard. A procession was issuing from the gateway with much pomp. There were venerable, white-bearded priests, and there were girls, too, arrayed in festive garb, their hair bedecked with flowers. Their gay ranks, amid which the slow-pacing patriarchs struck a sombre note, passed out across the sands. They were met by what seemed to be the advance guard of a great army. A man whose golden armour glittered hotly in the blazing sun descended from a chariot to receive them.