ura leaned forward.

"Look at the Professor," she whispered.

They all turned their heads. A queer change seemed to have come into the
Professor's face. His teeth were gleaming between his parted lips, his
head was a little thrust forward, his eyes were filled with a strange,
hard light. He was a transformed being, unrecognisable, perturbing. Even
while they watched, the girl floated close to where he sat and leaned
towards him with a queer, mocking smile. His hand suddenly descended upon
her foot. She laughed still more. There was a little exclamation from
Lenora. The Professor's whole frame quivered, he snatched the anklet from
the girl's ankle and bent over it. She leaned towards him, a torrent of
words streaming from her lips. The Professor answered her in her own
language. She listened to him in amazement. The anger passed. She held out
both her hands. The Professor still argued. She shook her head. Finally he
placed some gold in her palms. She patted him on the cheek, laughed into
his eyes, pointed behind and resumed her dancing. The anklet remained in
the Professor's hand.

"Say, we'll get out of this," Quest said. "The girls have had enough."

The Professor made no objection. He led the way, holding the anklet all
the time close to his eyes, and turning it round. They none of them spoke
to him, yet they were all conscious of an immense sense of relief when,
after they had passed into the street, he commenced to talk in his natural
voice.

"Congratulate me," he said. "I have been a collector of Assyrian gold
ornaments all my life. This is the one anklet I needed to complete my
collection. It has the double mark of the Pharaohs. I recognised it at
once. There are a thousand like it, you would think, in the bazaars there.
In reality there may be, perhaps, a dozen more in all Egypt which are
genuine."

They all looked at one another. Their relief had grown too poignant for
words.

"Early start to-morrow," Quest reminded them.

"Home and bed for me, this moment," Laura declared.

"The camels," the Professor assented, "will be round at daybreak."

Lenora, a few nights later, looked down from the star-strewn sky which
seemed suddenly to have dropped so much nearer to them, to the shadows
thrown across the desert by the dancing flames of their fire.

"It is the same world, I suppose," she murmured.

"A queer little place out of the same world," Quest agreed. "Listen to
those fellows, how they chatter!"