ld.
Don't talk so sedately. Mercy alive, you'd think you were an old
man!"

"I am in experience, my dear."

"Pshaw, that simply makes us more attractive," replied his old
flame.

CHAPTER XLVI

That night after dinner the music was already sounding in the
ball-room of the great hotel adjacent to the palm-gardens when Mrs.
Gerald found Lester smoking on one of the verandas with Jennie by his
side. The latter was in white satin and white slippers, her hair lying
a heavy, enticing mass about her forehead and ears. Lester was
brooding over the history of Egypt, its successive tides or waves of
rather weak-bodied people; the thin, narrow strip of soil along either
side of the Nile that had given these successive waves of population
sustenance; the wonder of heat and tropic life, and this hotel with
its modern conveniences and fashionable crowd set down among ancient,
soul-weary, almost despairing conditions. He and Jennie had looked
this morning on the pyramids. They had taken a trolley to the Sphinx!
They had watched swarms of ragged, half-clad, curiously costumed men
and boys moving through narrow, smelly, albeit brightly colored, lanes
and alleys.

"It all seems such a mess to me," Jennie had said at one place.
"They are so dirty and oily. I like it, but somehow they seem tangled
up, like a lot of worms."

Lester chuckled, "You're almost right. But climate does it. Heat.
The tropics. Life is always mushy and sensual under these conditions.
They can't help it."

"Oh, I know that. I don't blame them. They're just queer."

To-night he was brooding over this, the moon shining down into the
grounds with an exuberant, sensuous luster.

"Well, at last I've found you!" Mrs. Gerald exclaimed. "I couldn't
get down to dinner, after all. Our party was so late getting back.
I've made your husband agree to dance with me, Mrs. Kane," she went on
smilingly. She, like Lester and Jennie, was under the sensuous
influence of the warmth, the spring, the moonlight. There were rich
odors abroad, floating subtly from groves and gardens; from the remote
distance camel-bells were sounding and exotic cries, "Ayah!"
and "oosh! oosh!" as though a drove of strange animals were
being rounded up and driven through the crowded streets.

"You're welcome to him," replied Jennie pleasantly. "He ought to
dance. I sometimes wish I did."

"You ought to take lessons right away then," replied Lester
genially. "I'll do my best to keep you