, and he was travelling alone; so
there was no critical eye to mark the change in him, no chattering
tongue to express surprise at his pleasant abandonment to the follies
which make up the lives of sensitive artists and refined sensualists who
can differentiate between the promenade of the "Empire," and the garden
of love. As he stepped out into the Arab-haunted village that night,
after dinner, Bellairs breathed a sigh of relief. For a month he would
let himself go. Where to? He bent his steps towards the river, the Nile
that is the pulsing blood in the veins of Egypt. Moored in the shadow of
its brown banks lay a string of bright-eyed dahabeeyahs. From more than
one of them came music. Bellairs, his cigarette his only companion,
strolled slowly along listening idly in a pleasant dream. A woman's
voice sang, asking "Ninon" what was her scheme of life. A man beat out
his soul at the feet of "Medje." And, upon the deck of the last
dahabeeyah, a woman played a fantastic mazurka. Bellairs was fond of
music, and her performance was so clever, so full of nuances,
understanding, wild passion, that he stood still to remark it more
closely.

"She has known many things, good and evil," he thought, as his mind
noted the intellect that spoke in the changes of time, the regret and
the gaiety that the touch demonstrated so surely and easily, as the mood
of the composition changed. The music ceased.

"Betty," a woman's voice said, in English, but with a slight French
accent, "I want to see the stars. This awning hides them. Come for a
little walk."

"Yes; I want to see the stars too, and the awning does hide them," a
girl's voice answered. "Do let us take a little walk."

Bellairs smiled, as he said to himself, "The first voice is the voice of
the musician, and the second voice seems to be its echo." He was still
standing on the bank when the two women stepped upon the gangway to the
shore and climbed to the narrow path.

As they passed him by they glanced at him rather curiously. One was a
woman of about thirty, dark, with a pale, strong-featured face. The
other was a fair, aristocratic-looking girl, not more than seventeen.

"She is the echo," Bellairs thought. "Rather a sweet one." Then, at a
distance, he followed them, and presently found them sitting together in
the garden of the Hotel. He sat down not far off. A man, whom he knew
slightly, spoke to them, and afterwards crossed to him.

"That lady plays very cleverly," B