“Scrubby little artists in Paris call me Lucilla without the quiver of an eyelash.” “What may be permissible to a scrubby little artist in Paris,” said Martin, “mayn’t be permitted to one who ought to know better.” She passed him a plate containing the last banana. He declined with a courteous gesture. “Martin,” she said, deliberately dumping the fruit in front of him, “if you don’t look out, you will die of conscientiousness.” During part of the blazing ride back to Badrashen when the accidents of route and the vagrom whimsies of donkeys brought him to the side of the dry Mr. Dangerfield, he reflected on the attitude of men admitted to the intimacy of goddesses and great queens. What did Leicester call the august Elizabeth when she deigned to lay aside her majesty? And what were the sensations of Anchises, father of pious Æneas, when he first addressed Venus by her _petit nom_? * * * * * “Well,” said Fortinbras, the next day, “and how is my speculator in happiness getting on?” They were sitting on the terrace of Shepheard’s Hotel, their usual midday meeting-place. Save on these occasions the philosopher seemed to live dimly, in a sort of Oriental twilight. Yet all that Martin had seen (with the exception of the social moving-picture) he had also seen and therefrom sucked vastly more juice than the younger man. How and in what company he had visited the various monuments he did not say. It amused him to maintain his mysterious independence. Very rarely, and only when compelled by the imperious ruthlessness of Lucilla, did he otherwise emerge from his obscurity than on these daily visits to the famous terrace. There surrounded by chatter in all tongues and by representatives of all cities from Seattle round the earth’s girth to Tokio, he loved to sit and watch the ever-shifting scene—the traffic of all the centuries in the narrow street, from the laden ass driven by a replica of one of Joseph’s brethren to the modern Rolls-Royce sweeping along with a fat and tarbushed dignitary of the court; the ox-cart omnibus carrying its dingy load of veiled women; the poor funeral procession, the coffin borne on shoulders amid the perfunctory ululations of hired mourners; on the footpaths the contrast of slave attended, black-robed, trim-shod Egyptian ladies in yashmaks and the frank summer-clad Western women; Soudanese and Turks and Greeks and Jews and straight, clear-eyed English officers, and German tourists attired for the wilds of the Zambesi; and here and there a Gordon Highlander swinging along in kilts and white tunic; and lounging against the terrace balustrade, the dragomen, flaunting villains gay in rainbow robes, and the vendors of beads and fly-whisks and postcards holding up their wares at arm’s height and regarding prospective purchasers with the eyes of a crumb-expectant though self-respecting dog who sits on his tail by his master’s side; and, across the way, the curio shops rich