yed
uncertainly for a moment, steadying herself with one hand on the table.

The man turned, following her half-hypnotic gaze, in time to see Colonel
Von Ritz bending over her hand. With recognition, Benton started up,
then his jaw dropped and, doubting his own sanity, he fell back into his
chair and sat gazing with blank eyes.

At Von Ritz's elbow stood Pagratide.

Slowly Benton came to his feet, his ears ringing. Then as Karyl turned
from the girl and held out his hand to him, the American heard, as one
listening through the roaring of a fever, some question about affairs in
Galavia.

He heard Karyl answer, and though the words seemed to come from
somewhere beyond Port Said, he recognized that the former King tried to
speak in a matter-of-fact voice.

"I have no Kingdom. Louis took it."

Karyl had held out his left hand. The right was bound down in a sling.
But these things were all vague to Benton because it seemed that the
pilgrim's tom-toms were beating inside his brain, and beating out of
time. He could see that Karyl's eyes also were weary and lusterless.

Turning with an excuse for travel-stain to be removed, Karyl halted.

"Benton," he said. There he fell silent. "Benton," he said again,
forcing himself to speak in a voice not far from the breaking point,
"Blanco--Blanco is dead."

He turned on his heel and went into the hotel.

Blanco dead! For a moment Benton felt an insane desire to rush after
Karyl and demand his life for Blanco's. Some delirious accusation that
this man cost him every dear thing in life seemed fighting for
expression and reprisal, then he realized that the _toreador_ had won
his way into Pagratide's affection as well as his own. Tears came to his
eyes for an instant. He focused his gaze on a cigarette-shop across the
street.

"Lady!"

A grinning Egyptian face, surmounted by a red fez, showed itself over
the railing. The girl started violently and seemed for a moment on the
edge of hysteria. She laughed unnaturally. Thus encouraged, the
Bedouin's grin broadened until it radiated good-humor across the swarthy
visage from cheek-bone to cheek-bone.

"Nice scarabs, lady! Only five _piastres_--only one shilling," he
spieled. "Scarabs of a dead dynasty. _Tres antique_."

CHAPTER XXIV

IN WHICH KINGS AND COMMONERS DISCUSS LOVE

In the gardens of the hotel, the paths lay ankle-deep in scattered
confetti. Already the scores of lights were going out and those that
remain