ted pipe after pipe. When the
train started out on the High Bridge across the Nile to the eastern
bank, he came out in the corridor to look out the wide glass windows
there, and found Arlee beside him.

"How do you do?" she said brightly. "How nice to meet accidentally
like this--you see, I'm rehearsing my story," she added under her
breath.

"Let's see if you have it straight," he told her.

"I arrive on a local which left Cairo this morning.... Did I come
alone?"

"You'd better invent some nice traveling friend----"

She shook her head in flat refusal. "I won't. I'm not equal to
inventing anything. It's bad enough now to--to tell the _necessary_
lies I have to." The brightness left her face looking suddenly wan
and sorry. "I suppose it's part of my--punishment--for my dreadful
folly," she said in a low tone.

"It's just part of the coin the world has to be paid in for its
conventions," Billy quickly retorted. "_Don't_ let it worry you like
that--in a day no one will think to question you."

"I know--but--it's having the memory always there. Always knowing
that there is something I can't be honest about--something secret
and dreadful----"

She was staring unseeingly out the window, her soft lips twitching.

"The Egyptians were a most sensible people," said Billy. "They drew
up a list of commandments against the forty-two cardinal sins, and
one of them was this, 'Thou shalt not consume thy heart.' That is a
religious law against regret--vain, unprofitable, morbid,
devastating regret. And you must take that law for your own."

"Th--thank you." The low voice was suspiciously wavery. "I--you see,
I haven't had time to think about it till just now--we've been going
so fast----"

"And the best thing that could have happened. And now that you have
the time to think, you mustn't think _weakly_. It was just a
nightmare. And it's over."

"Just a nightmare.... And it's over," she repeated. Her eyes lifted
to Billy's in a look of ineffable softness and wonder. "It's
over--because _you_ came."

"I want you to forget that." The young man spoke with cold curtness
in his effort to combat the wild temptation of that moment. "I only
did what anyone else in my place would have done--to have
accomplished it is all the gratitude I want. Please don't speak of
it to me again. You must forget about it."

"Forget--as if I could help being grateful as long as I live!"

"But I don't _want_ you to be grateful. It--it's obnoxi