s
household. Now he studied the girl. He had never seen her before;
of that he was sure. He ordered them coffee, and handed the girl a
goldpiece. As he did so, he noticed that among several paste rings she
wore one of value. All at once the suspicion struck him: Imshi Pasha
had sent the girl--to try him perhaps, to gain power over him maybe,
as women had gained power over strong men before. But why should Imshi
Pasha send the girl and his mouffetish on this miserable mission? Was
not Imshi Pasha his friend?

Quietly smoking his cigarette, he said to the man: "You may go, Mahommed
Melik; I have had enough. Take your harem with you," he added quickly.

The man scarcely stirred a muscle, the woman flushed deeply.

"So be it, effendi," answered the man, rising unmoved, for his sort know
not shame. He beckoned to the girl. For an instant she stood hesitating,
then with sudden fury she threw on the table beside him the gold-piece
Dimsdale had given her.

"Magnoon!" she said, with blazing eyes, and ran after the man.

"I may be a fool, my dear," Dimsdale said after her; "but you might say
the same of the Pasha who sent you here."

Dimsdale was angry for a moment, and he said some hard words of Imshi
Pasha as he watched the two decoys hurry away into the dusk. He thought
it nothing more serious than an attempt to know of what stuff he was
made. He went to bed with dreams of vast new areas watered for summer
rice, of pumping-stations lifting millions of cubic metres of water per
day; of dykes to be protected by bulrushes and birriya weeds; of great
desert areas washed free of carbonates and sulphates and selling at
twenty pounds an acre; of a green Egypt with three crops, and himself
the Regenerator, the Friend of the Fellah.

In this way he soon forgot that he had remembered Lucy Gray, and the
incident of the girl ceased to trouble. His progress up the river,
however, was marked by incidents whose significance he did not at once
see. Everywhere his steamer stopped people came with backsheesh in the
shape of butter, cream, flour, eggs, fowls, cloths, and a myriad things.
Jewels from mummy cases, antichi, donkeys, were offered him: all of
which he steadfastly refused, sometimes with contumely. Officials
besought his services with indelicate bribes, and by devious
hospitalities and attentions more than one governor sought to bring his
projects for irrigation in line with their own particular duplicities.

"Behold, effendi