e was streaked with
compunction. She had been horribly angry with him for running away,
and she remembered his opposition to the idea enough to be
suspicious of any disappearance--but there was certainly an accent
of embarrassed sincerity about him.

Perhaps he _had_ been ill. Sudden seizures were not unknown in
Egypt. And for all his desert brown he didn't look very rugged.

She murmured, "I hope you hadn't taken anything that disagreed with
you."

"H'm--it rather agreed with me at the time," said Jack, and then
brought himself up short. "I expect I haven't looked very sharp
after myself--"

But Jinny did not wholly renounce her idea. "Does it always take you
at dances you don't want to go to?"

"That's unfair. I came, you know."

"You came--and went."

"I'd have been all right if I hadn't come," he murmured, and Jinny
felt suddenly ashamed of herself.

"Do you suppose that you would stay all right if you came to
dinner?" she offered pacificably. "It's our last night, you know,
till we come back from the Nile."

"I wish I could." Ryder stopped short. Now, why didn't he? Certainly
he didn't intend--

But his tongue took matters promptly out of his hesitation's hands.
"Fact is, I've an engagement." He added, appeasingly, "That's why I
was so keen on getting you for tea." And Jinny told him
appreciatively that it was a lovely tea and a lovely view.

"We're going to be at the hotel, I expect," she threw out,
carelessly, "and if you get through in time--"

Rather hastily he assured her that indeed, if he got through in
time--

She was a nice girl, was Jinny. A pretty girl, with just the right
amount of red in her hair. Sanity would have sent him to the hotel
to dine with her.

Sanity would also have sent him to the Jockey Club with McLean.

Certainly sanity had nothing to do with the way that he kept himself
to himself, after his farewells at the hotel with the Pendletons,
and took him to an out-of-the-way Greek cafe where he dined very
badly upon stringy lamb and sodden baklava.

Later he wandered restlessly about dark, medieval streets where
squat groups were clustered about some coffee house door, intent
upon a game of checkers or some patriarchal story teller,
recounting, very probably, a bandied narration of the Thousand and
One Nights. Through other open doors drifted the exasperating nasal
twang of Cairene music, and idly pausing, Ryder could see above the
red fezes and turbans that topped the