will be, seen by a man. The temple in which the idol
sits always makes a difference in the nature of our worship of the idol.
Bellairs was forced to recognise this fact. And the temple in which sat
the idol of Lady Betty's nature attracted him more than the temple in
which sat the idol of Mdlle. Leroux's nature. He came to this conclusion
one afternoon at Karnak. They three were hidden away in a stone nook of
this great stone forest, enshrined from the gaze of tourists by mighty
rugged pillars, walled in by huge blocks of antique masonry that threw
cold shadows whence the lizards stole to seek the sun. The blue sky was
broken to their gaze by a narrow section of what had been, doubtless,
once a wide-spread roof. A silence of endless ages hung around them in
this haven fashioned by dead men and living Time.

Mdlle. Leroux had been boiling a kettle; and they sipped tea, and, at
first, did not talk. But tea unlooses the bonds of speech. After their
second cups they felt communicative.

"One week gone out of my four," Bellairs said, "and each will seem
shorter-lived than its forerunner."

"You go in three weeks from now?" said Mdlle. Leroux, with an uneven
intonation that betokened a sudden awakening to the finality of things.

"Yes; at the end of January."

"And we are here until nearly the end of March."

"Yes," said Lady Betty; "it will seem a very long time. February will be
eternal."

"It is the shortest month in the year," Bellairs remarked.

Mdlle. Leroux looked at him sarcastically.

"You English are so prosaic," she exclaimed. "Any Frenchman would have
understood."

"What?"

"That we were paying you a compliment."

"Perhaps I did understand it, and preferred not to show my
comprehension; there is such a thing as modesty!"

"There is--such a thing as false modesty!"

"Exactly," remarked Lady Betty.

"I will accept your compliment gladly," said Bellairs, looking at Lady
Betty.

"Mine?" asked Clarice Leroux.

"Yes," Bellairs replied.

The consciousness that he cared very much more for such a pretty meaning
in Lady Betty than in Clarice Leroux led him then, for the first time,
to that Garden Gate. He looked at Lady Betty again with a new feeling.
She returned his gaze quietly. Then he turned his eyes to those of
Clarice. Hers were fixed upon him with a curious violence. He had a
momentary sensation, literally for the first time, that these two women
after all, had not one soul, one heart, betwee