m to have bandages and
medicine, forbidding him to be talked to or sung to, and pulling his
little, curling-up limbs straight when he was going to sleep. He was a
healthy little fellow and already pretty, with his soft dark
hair--softer than anything in the world except a baby's hair--his
delicate eyebrows and bright dark eyes. Mildred loved playing with him.
Sometimes when Ian heard the tiny shrieks of baby laughter, he used to
think with a smile and yet with a pang of pity, how shocked poor Milly
would have been at this titillation of the infant brain. But he did not
want thoughts of Milly--so far as he could he shut the door of his mind
against them. She would come back, no doubt, sooner or later; and her
coming back would mean that Mildred would be robbed of her life, his own
life robbed of its joy.

At the end of Term the Master of Durham sent a note to bid the Stewarts
to dine with him and meet Sir Henry Milwood, the rich Australian, and
Maxwell Davison, the traveller and Orientalist. Ian remarked that
Davison was a cousin, although they had not met since he was a boy.
Maxwell Davison had gone to the East originally as agent for some big
firm, and had spent there nearly twenty years. He was an accomplished
Persian and Arabic scholar, and gossip related that he had run off with
a fair Persian from a Constantinople harem and lived with her in Persia
until her death. But that was years ago.

When the Stewarts entered the Master's bare bachelor drawing-room, they
found besides the Milwoods, only familiar faces. Maxwell Davison was
still awaited, and with interest. He came, and that interest did not
appear to be mutual, judging from the Oriental impassivity of his long,
brown face, with its narrow, inscrutable eyes. He was tall, slight,
sinewy as a Bedouin, his age uncertain, since his dry leanness and the
dash of silver at his temples might be the effect of burning desert
suns.

Mildred was delighted at first at being sent into dinner with him, but
she found him disappointingly taciturn. In truth, he had acquired
Oriental habits and views with regard to women. If a foolish Occidental
custom demanded that they should sit at meat with the lords of creation,
he, Maxwell Davison, would not pretend to acquiesce in it. Mildred, to
whom it was unthinkable that any man should not wish to talk to her,
merely pitied his shyness and determined to break it down; but Davison's
attitude was unbending.

After dinner the Master,