In a crowded lane at the back of the pavilion people were clamouring for their carriages and complaining of the idleness and even rudeness of the Arab runners, but Helena’s automobile was brought up instantly, and when it was moving off, with the General inside, Helena at the wheel, and Gordon by her side, the natives touched their foreheads to the Colonel and said, "_Bismillah!_" As soon as the car was clear away, and Gordon was alone with Helena for the first time, there was one of those privateering passages of love between them which lovers know how to smuggle through even in public and the eye of day. "Well!" "Well!" "Everybody has been saying the sweetest things to me and you’ve never yet uttered a word." "Did you really expect me to speak—there—before all those people? But it was splendid, glorious, magnificent!" And then, the steering-wheel notwithstanding, her gauntletted left hand went down to where his right hand was waiting for it. Crossing the iron bridge over the river, they drew up at the British Agency, a large, ponderous, uninspired edifice, with its ambuscaded back to the city and its defiant front to the Nile, and there, as Gordon got down, the General, who still looked hot and excited, said— "You’ll dine with us to-night, my boy—usual hour, you know?" "With pleasure, sir," said Gordon, and then Helena leaned over and whispered— "May I guess what your father is going to talk about?" "The demonstration?" "Oh no!" "What then?" "The new prophet at Alexandria." "I wonder," said Gordon, and with a wave of the hand he disappeared behind a screen of purple blossom, as Helena and the General faced home. Their way lay up through the old city, where groups of aggressive young students, at sight of the General’s gold-laced cap, started afresh the Kentish fire of their "Long live Egypt," up and up until they reached the threatening old fortress on the spur of the Mokattani Hills, and then through the iron-clamped gates to the wide courtyard where the mosque of Mohammed Ali, with its spikey minarets, stands on the edge of the ramparts like a cock getting ready to crow, and drew up at the gate of a heavy-lidded house which looks sleepily down on the city, the sinuous Nile, the sweeping desert, the preponderating Pyramids, and the last saluting of the sun. Then as Helena rose from her seat she saw that the General’s head had fallen back and his face was scarlet. "Father, you are ill." "Only a little faint—I’ll be better presently." But he stumbled in stepping out of the car, and Helena said— "You _are_ ill, and you must go to bed immediately, and let me put Gordon off until to-morrow." "No, let him come. I want to hear what the Consul-General had to say to him." In spite of himself he had to go to bed, though, and half-an-hour later, having given him a sedative, Helena was saying—