s, I am going to Egypt. Why should I stay? What has life to offer
me here save vegetation? There, at least, I can find action."

She looked at him with a strange, wistful expression which struck and
startled him. He felt as if a prisoned soul suddenly sprang up and
gazed at him out of the clear blue depths of her eyes. "Oh what a good
thing it is to be a man!" she said. "How free you are! how able to do
what you please and go where you please--to seek action and to find
it! Oh, Major Clare, you ought to thank God night and day that He did
not make you a woman!"

"I am glad, certainly, that I am a man," said Victor honestly. "But
you are the last woman in the world from whom I should have expected
to hear such rebellious sentiments."

"I am not rebellious," said Eleanor more quietly. "What is the good of
it? All the rebellion in the world could not make me a man; and I have
no fancy to be an unsexed woman. But nobody was ever more weary of
conventional routine, nobody ever longed more for freedom and action
than I do."

It was on the end of Victor's tongue to say, "Then come with me to
Egypt," but he caught himself in time. Was he mad to imagine that "the
beautiful Miss Milbourne"--a woman at whose feet the most desirable
matches of "society" had been laid--would end her brilliant career
by marrying a soldier of fortune, and expatriating herself from her
country and her kindred? He gave a grim sort of smile which Eleanor
did not quite understand, as he said: "Where is your lotos? It ought
to make you more content with the things that be."

"I have it," Eleanor said with child-like simplicity. "Mr. Brent
remembered and brought it to me. I have not forgotten my promise to
share it with you."

"Take it to the mountain to-morrow night, then," said he quickly. "Let
us eat it together there. I should like to link _you_ even with my
farewell to the past."

And, since an interruption came just then, they parted with this
understanding.

The next day Major Clare was standing on the terrace of Claremont--a
stately, solidly-built old house, bearing itself with an air of
conscious pride and disdain of modern frippery, despite certain
significant signs of decay--when his guests arrived in formidable
procession. There was something of the "old school" in his manner of
welcoming them--a grace and courtesy which struck more than one of
them as at once very perfect and very charming.

"The man suits the house, does he not?" s