laid in his hand:

"You are even more noble than I thought, and shall have your reward.
Grace waits you at Cairo. Have written her all that she must ever know.
Go at once and God bless you both!"

He left that night for the East, and at the house of the Brevoorts
learned that Mr. Brevoort and his wife had taken their departure two
days before on an extended tour of the Orient. Yes, Mrs. Brevoort had
left an enclosure for him.

It contained only a little note from Grace Carter to Constance and in
his misery he could not understand why the latter had urged him to go to
Cairo:

"I forgive you, even as I think God has forgiven you," Grace wrote, "for
I, too, have been whirled in the maelstrom of his irresistible passion.
I do not presume to sit in judgment of you, for you have given him his
life--and at what an awful price! May God grant you forgetfulness, the
boon that has been denied me."

Underneath this was written in Mrs. Carter's angular hand:

"I found this on my daughter's table the day after she was stricken down
by brain fever, and an investigation of her correspondence shows it to
have been intended for you. Now that the danger is passed and she is on
the way to recovery, I send it to you with my contempt. Deem yourself
fortunate that it is not my curse, instead."

On the forward deck of the great ocean grayhound that was cleaving the
waters at record speed, a man stood that night with his face turned ever
to the East. It would be ten days more before he could kiss the hem of
her garment in supplication, ten days of hell in whose torturing fires
his soul shriveled with a sickening fear.

If he had lost her, after all!

CHAPTER XXIII

BELSHAZZAR COMES BACK TO STAY

In her apartments at the Grand Hotel de Esbekie-yeh in Cairo, a
wan-faced girl was looking wearily out over the splendid panorama spread
before her. In the heel of the afternoon the level rays of the sun were
gilding parti-colored minarets of mosque and palaces with barbaric
splendor. In the distance the Shoubrah palaces gleamed even more
fairy-like than usual; the Abbasieyeh camps were astir with multi-hued
life, and on its frowning rock the distant citadel was a gem in red
bronze.

On the bosom of the world's most mysterious river, the brown sails were
gleaming like the wings of great birds, and inshore the graceful lateens
under the dipping shadoofs were closely folded as they lay at rest. Over
beyond Ghizeh loomed the Pyrami