nd of him more.' The excellent Binat
began to kick and scream.

'All things are for sale in Port Said,' said Madame. 'If my husband
comes it will be so much more. Eh, 'how you call--'alf a sovereign.'

The money was paid, and the mad dance was held at night in a walled
courtyard at the back of Madame Binat's house. The lady herself, in
faded mauve silk always about to slide from her yellow shoulders,
played the piano, and to the tin-pot music of a Western waltz the naked
Zanzibari girls danced furiously by the light of kerosene lamps. Binat
sat upon a chair and stared with eyes that saw nothing, till the whirl
of the dance and the clang of the rattling piano stole into the drink
that took the place of blood in his veins, and his face glistened. Dick
took him by the chin brutally and turned that face to the light. Madame
Binat looked over her shoulder and smiled with many teeth. Dick leaned
against the wall and sketched for an hour, till the kerosene lamps began
to smell, and the girls threw themselves panting on the hard-beaten
ground. Then he shut his book with a snap and moved away, Binat plucking
feebly at his elbow. 'Show me,' he whimpered. 'I too was once an artist,
even I!' Dick showed him the rough sketch. 'Am I that?' he screamed.
'Will you take that away with you and show all the world that it is
I,--Binat?' He moaned and wept.

'Monsieur has paid for all,' said Madame. 'To the pleasure of seeing
Monsieur again.'

The courtyard gate shut, and Dick hurried up the sandy street to the
nearest gambling-hell, where he was well known. 'If the luck holds, it's
an omen; if I lose, I must stay here.' He placed his money picturesquely
about the board, hardly daring to look at what he did. The luck held.

Three turns of the wheel left him richer by twenty pounds, and he went
down to the shipping to make friends with the captain of a decayed
cargo-steamer, who landed him in London with fewer pounds in his pocket
than he cared to think about.

A thin gray fog hung over the city, and the streets were very cold; for
summer was in England.

'It's a cheerful wilderness, and it hasn't the knack of altering much,'
Dick thought, as he tramped from the Docks westward. 'Now, what must I
do?'

The packed houses gave no answer. Dick looked down the long lightless
streets and at the appalling rush of traffic. 'Oh, you rabbit-hutches!'
said he, addressing a row of highly respectable semi-detached
residences. 'Do you know what