"And then all of a sudden he walked over to me! 'Come!' he said, putting his hand on my shoulder and speaking in a voice which he had the trick of making wonderfully amiable. 'Dear me, dear me! How I must bore you with my old relics. You want some tea and muffins or something of the kind, eh? Will you do me the honour of taking tea with me?' he said, leading me through a door in a recess and a wilderness of corridors to a small room, where a charming French girl presided over a steaming tea-pot of massive silver. "'This is Captain Crabbe,' said Ombos introducing me to her. He turned to me. 'This is Margot, my niece,' he said with a smile. "I made a step forward and bowed slightly; she was very pretty, this girl, as she stood there with the rich red light from the silk lamp shades behind her. She was one of those dark, seductive women that look their best in a warm light; and that evening her face and figure seemed instinct with the joy of youth. "Never before have I tasted such hot-cakes and sandwiches, and muffins ... there could be nothing like them, nor any hot-cakes to set above them in all Europe. The sinister look had now quite passed from my host's face as he sat before me stirring tea and munching muffins comfortably; he seemed goodheartedness embodied. On the table were some wonderful lucid china bowls filled with cigarettes, Parascho and _caporal ordinaire_, Egyptian and every imaginable kind. After tea we pushed back our chairs and smoked. His conversation was delightful, and showed me at once that he was a man of brilliant gifts, yet an eccentric. I felt much as Mark Twain must have felt when he first met Rudyard Kipling; Twain has summed up, in that inimitable way of his, the feeling of being in the presence of an overwhelming personality. 'I believed that he knew more than any person I had met before, and I knew that he knew that I knew less than any person he had met before--though he did not say it, and I was not expecting that he would.'... That was exactly how I felt when I was talking tea with Ombos ... his conversation was as exhilarating as wine; his presence diffused a stimulating atmosphere; I felt exalted by his joyous enthusiasm.