“Well, that’s something, at any rate,” said Denzil, with an air of relief. “Don’t cry, Helen, it bothers me. As for the ‘sweet girl’ you have got in view for me, you will permit me to say that ‘sweet girls’ are becoming uncommonly scarce in Britain. What with bicycle riders and great rough tomboys generally, with large hands and larger feet, I confess I do not care about them. I like a womanly woman,--a graceful woman,--a fascinating, bewitching woman, and the Princess is all that and more. Surely you consider her beautiful?” “Very beautiful indeed!” sighed poor Helen.--“Too beautiful!” “Nonsense! As if any woman can be too beautiful! I am sorry you won’t come to the Mena House. It would be a change for you,--and Gervase is going.” “Is he better to-day?” inquired Helen timidly. “Oh, I believe he is quite well again. It was the heat or the scent of the flowers, or something of that sort, that made him faint last night. He is not acclimatized yet, you know. And he said that the Princess’s dancing made him giddy.” “I don’t wonder at that,” murmured Helen. “It was marvellous--glorious!” said Denzil dreamily. “It was like nothing else ever seen or imagined!” “If she were your wife, would you care for her to dance before people?” inquired Helen tremblingly. Denzil turned upon her in haughty wrath. “How like a woman that is! To insinuate a nasty suggestion--to imply an innuendo without uttering it! If she were my wife, she would do nothing unbecoming that position.” “Then you did think it a little unbecoming?” persisted Helen. “No, I did _not_!” said Denzil sharply. “An independent woman may do many things that a married woman may not. Marriage brings its own duties and responsibilities,--time enough to consider them when they come.” He turned angrily on his heel and left her, and Helen, burying her fair face in her hands, wept long and unrestrainedly. This “strange woman out of Egypt” had turned her brother’s heart against her, and stolen away her almost declared lover. It was no wonder that her tears fell fast, wrung from her with the pain of this double wound; for Helen, though quiet and undemonstrative, had fine feelings and unsounded depths of passion in her nature, and the fatal attraction she felt for Armand Gervase was more powerful than she had herself known. Now that he had openly confessed his infatuation for another woman, it seemed as though the earth had opened at her feet and shown her nothing but a grave in which to fall. Life--empty and blank and bare of love and tenderness, stretched before her imagination; she saw herself toiling along the monotonously even road of duty till her hair became gray and her face thin and wan and wrinkled, and never a gleam again of the beautiful, glowing, romantic passion that for a short time had made her days splendid with the dreams that are sweeter than all realities.