nd talked French, but I shook my head and she went off again.

Presently a girl came on the stage and danced, a silly affair, all a
clashing of tambourines and wriggling. I have seen native women do the
same thing better in a Mozambique kraal. Another sang a German song, a
simple, sentimental thing about golden hair and rainbows, and the
Germans present applauded. The place was so tinselly and common that,
coming to it from weeks of rough travelling, it made me impatient. I
forgot that, while for the others it might be a vulgar little
dancing-hall, for us it was as perilous as a brigands' den.

Peter did not share my mood. He was quite interested in it, as he was
interested in everything new. He had a genius for living in the moment.

I remember there was a drop-scene on which was daubed a blue lake with
very green hills in the distance. As the tobacco smoke grew thicker
and the fiddles went on squealing, this tawdry picture began to
mesmerize me. I seemed to be looking out of a window at a lovely
summer landscape where there were no wars or danger. I seemed to feel
the warm sun and to smell the fragrance of blossom from the islands.
And then I became aware that a queer scent had stolen into the
atmosphere.

There were braziers burning at both ends to warm the room, and the thin
smoke from these smelt like incense. Somebody had been putting a
powder in the flames, for suddenly the place became very quiet. The
fiddles still sounded, but far away like an echo. The lights went
down, all but a circle on the stage, and into that circle stepped my
enemy of the skin cap.

He had three others with him. I heard a whisper behind me, and the
words were those which Kuprasso had used the day before. These
bedlamites were called the Companions of the Rosy Hours, and Kuprasso
had promised great dancing.

I hoped to goodness they would not see us, for they had fairly given me
the horrors. Peter felt the same, and we both made ourselves very
small in that dark corner. But the newcomers had no eyes for us.

In a twinkling the pavilion changed from a common saloon, which might
have been in Chicago or Paris, to a place of mystery--yes, and of
beauty. It became the Garden-House of Suliman the Red, whoever that
sportsman may have been. Sandy had said that the ends of the earth
converged there, and he had been right. I lost all consciousness of my
neighbours--stout German, frock-coated Turk, frowsy Jewess--and saw
on