ut to leave all, save what I actually felt,
unsaid. Diplomacy I was trained in, and on most matters I had a glib
enough tongue. But to palter with women was a lightness I had always
neglected, and if I had invented would-be pretty speeches out of my
clumsy inexperience, Phorenice would have seen through the fraud on the
instant. She had been nurtured during these years of her rule on a
pap of these silly protestations, and could weigh their value with an
expert's exactness.

Nor was it a case where honest confession would have served my purpose
better. If I had put my position to her in plain words, it would have
made relations worse. And so perforce I had to hold my tongue, and
submit to be considered a clown.

"I had always heard," she said, "that you colonists in Yucatan were far
ahead of those in Egypt in all the arts and graces. But you, sir, do
small credit to your vice-royalty. Why, I have had gentry from the Nile
come here, and you might almost think they had never left their native
shores."

"They must have made great strides this last twenty years, then. When
last I was sent to Egypt to report, the blacks were clearly masters of
the land, and our people lived there only on sufferance. Their pyramids
were puny, and their cities nothing more than forts."

"Oh," she said mockingly, "they are mere exiles still, but they remember
their manners. My poor face seemed to please them, at least they all
went into raptures over it. And for ten pleasant words, one of them cut
off his own right hand. We made the bargain, my Egyptian gallant and
I, and the hand lies dried on some shelf in my apartment to-day as a
pleasant memento."

But here, by a lucky chance for me, an incident occurred which saved me
from further baiting. The rebels outside the walls were conducting their
day's attack with vigour and some intelligence. More than once during
our procession the lighter missiles from their war engines had sung
up through the air, and split against a building, and thrown splinters
which wounded those who thronged the streets. Still there had been
nothing to ruffle the nerves of any one at all used to the haps of
warfare, or in any way to hinder our courtship. But presently, it seems,
they stopped hurling stones from their war engines, and took to loading
them with carcases of wood lined with the throwing fire.

Now, against stone buildings these did little harm, save only that they
scorched horribly any poor wretch tha