s strangely natural. Bellairs
rode out alone with her along the built-up brown roads into the desert,
and tried to interest her, but she was abstracted and seemed deep in
thought. Often she didn't hear what he was saying, and when she did hear
and replied, her answers were short and careless, and rather dismissed
than encouraged the subject to which they were applied. Bellairs, at
last, gave up attempting to talk, and from time to time stole a cautious
glance at her pretty face. He noticed that it wore a puzzled expression,
as if she were turning over something in her mind and could not come to
a conclusion about it. She did not look exactly sad, but merely grave
and distrait. At length he exclaimed, determined to rouse her into some
sort of comradeship:--

"You never caught that headache, did you?"

"Clarice's, you mean? No."

"Is it coming on now?"

"Oh, no. I feel perfectly well. What made you think it was?"

"You won't talk to me, and you look so preternaturally serious. I am
sure I have unwittingly offended you?"

"No, you haven't. You are just as you always are, better to me than I
deserve."

"You deserve the best man in the world."

"I already have the best woman."

"Mdlle. Leroux?"

"Yes; Clarice."

"You admire her very much."

"Of course. I would give anything to be like her."

Bellairs hesitated a moment. Then he said with a slight, uneasy laugh:--

"But you are wonderfully like her."

Betty looked surprised.

"I don't see how," she answered.

"No, because we never see ourselves. But when I first knew you both, I
was immensely struck by the curious resemblance between you, in mind, in
the things you said, in the things you did, the people you liked."

"We both liked you."

"Yes."

"It would have been strange if we had both loved you!" Betty said,
musingly.

Bellairs laughed again, and gave his horse a cut with the whip. "I only
wanted one to do that," he said, not quite truthfully. "And, thank God,
I have got my desire."

Betty did not answer.

"Haven't I?" he persisted.

"You know whether you have or not," she answered. "How beautiful the
sunset is going to be to-night. Look at the light over Karnak."

She pointed towards the temple with her whip. Bellairs felt a crawling
despair that numbed him What did it all mean? Was he torturing himself
foolishly, or was this instinct which gnawed at his heart a thing to be
reckoned with? When he left Betty at the dahabeeyah, he walked