e wide world, the only
human being to whom I should dream of applying for help or for sympathy
in the things that matter is Hadassah Ireton, Hadassah the Syrian,
whose marriage with an Englishman of good family would have so shocked
and horrified me not so very long ago!"

A smile of amusement changed the expression of her face. She was
thinking of Hadassah as she really was, and of the outcast Hadassah as
she would have pictured her. The smile lost itself in the shame with
which the memory of her ignorance and prejudice filled her. How well
Hadassah and her husband could afford to forget the narrow-mindedness
and the conceit of it all!

CHAPTER XXII

And now to return to Michael. During the weary weeks of anxiety and
suffering which Margaret spent in Egypt before she sailed for England,
Michael lay hovering between life and death in the _Omdeh's_ house near
the subterranean village in the Libyan Desert.

Abdul had taken him there when he gathered him up in his strong arms on
the eventful evening when he left the excavation-tent in the hills. A
violent attack of fever, made more serious and difficult to throw off
by the overwrought condition of his nerves, kept Michael a helpless
exile in the hands of the hospitable but somewhat ignorant _Omdeh_ and
the devoted Abdul.

When the fever was at its height, Michael was very often delirious; in
his ramblings he let the discreet Abdul see deep down into the secret
hiding-places of his heart. Sometimes he spoke in English, and
sometimes in Arabic. Abdul could understand a great deal more English
than he could speak, and as Michael often repeated the same things in
Arabic--when he thought he was addressing Abdul--he soon found the key
to much which, without the Arabic translation and constant reiteration,
might have escaped his understanding. Arabs learn a language with
extraordinary rapidity; it is no unusual thing to meet a dragoman who
can understand three or four languages, and speak a fair smattering of
each; the same man is probably unable to read or write in any one of
the four. From the deep waters of affliction came strange and terrible
revelations, of desires and temptations which the conscious man had not
allowed himself to recognize. In his helplessness they leapt forth and
proclaimed themselves unmistakably. He innocently betrayed the nature
of the woman who had earned Abdul's hatred.

At other times he called upon Margaret and implored her f