lence, and then a few whispered words.

"She called me a half-caste, Mother!--me--a half-caste!"

And the mother fell at her son's feet and bowed her head to the ground,
and he swept her up into his arms, raining kisses upon the piteous face.

"I don't blame you, sweetheart-mother," he said in English, whilst she
sobbed on his heart. "Am I not the fruit of a brave woman's great
love? Could there be anything finer than that? But my father in me
made my whole body clamour for the desert when I was in England; my
mother in me makes my heart throb in the desert for just one hour of
her cool, misty country, one hour on a hill-top in which to watch the
pearl-gray dawn. Dearest, dearest, don't sob so. It is a case of two
affirmatives making a negative; two great nationalities decried,
derided, rendered null and void in their offspring through the dictates
of those who, in religion, prate that we are all brothers. I have just
got to stick it, my mother, and life is not very long. But I shall
never marry." And as he spoke, Fate flicked a page of an illustrated
paper, which was but the volume of the Book of Life, and perhaps only a
mother's eyes would have noticed the sudden tightening of the hand upon
the marble of the balustrade as the man looked down into the pictured
beauty of the woman he loved.

And, having read what had been written, he knelt to receive his
mother's blessing.

"To the Tents of Purple and Gold, my darling?" she asked, smiling so
bravely to hide her breaking heart.

"Not just yet, dear; a bit further North first, I think."

"For long?"

"I do not know, dear. Bless me, O my mother."

She blessed him and called to him as he stood at the head of the marble
stairway:

"Come back to me, my son!"

"That, O woman, is in the hands of Allah, who is God."

And he turned and left her, and she, having wept her heart out and her
beautiful eyes dim, took up the illustrated paper which was a volume of
the Book of Life, and turned the pages.

"Ah!" she said. "How beautiful!"

It was just a simple photograph of Damaris at a tennis tournament, and
underneath the information that the most popular and beautiful visitor
in Cairo would celebrate her birthday in a week's time, that in honour
of the occasion her god-mother, the Duchess of Longacres, had issued
invitations for a fancy-dress ball, after which social event she and
her god-daughter would proceed to the Desert Palace Hotel, Heliopolis.

"I w