me your way?"

"Sure!" Zoe had cried. "You spend too much on me, and on Pinkertons, and
not enough on people who really want it."

"You ought to join the staff of the _Gleaner_, Zoe! They specialise in
that brand of junk, and they're in the popular market at the moment,
too. They'll win the next election hands down, I'm told."

"Why don't you start a fund for Canadian emigrants?" Zoe had proceeded.
"You've made a heap of money out of Canada. Then you wouldn't have to
buy any airships, maybe!"

"I don't have to! No Roman Emperor was watched closer'n me! If that guy
gets me held up he's earnin' his money! Zoe, you're a durned unnatural
daughter!"

The thought of that conversation made her smile. To her it seemed so
ridiculous that her father should guard his expenditure like one who has
but a few dollars between himself and starvation. The gold fever was an
incomprehensible disease to the daughter of the man who was more
savagely bitten with it than almost any other living plutocrat.

Musing upon these matters, Zoe slept, and dreamed.

She dreamed that she stood in the gateway of an ancient city, amid a
throng of people attired in the picturesque garb of the East. About her,
the city was _en fete_. Before her stretched the desert, an undulating
ocean of greyness, a dry ocean parched by a merciless sun.

Barbaric music sounded; the clashing of cymbals and quiver of strange
instruments rendering it unlike any music she had ever heard. A
procession was issuing from the gateway with much pomp. There were
venerable, white-bearded priests, and there were girls, too, arrayed in
festive garb, their hair bedecked with flowers. Their gay ranks, amid
which the slow-pacing patriarchs struck a sombre note, passed out across
the sands.

They were met by what seemed to be the advance guard of a great army. A
man whose golden armour glittered hotly in the blazing sun descended
from a chariot to receive them.

Then, amid music and shouting and the beating of drums, the procession
returned, surrounding the chariot in which the golden one rode. It was
filled to the brim with flowers.

As it passed in at the gate, the occupant stooped, took up a huge lily
and threw it to Zoe. His eyes met hers. And, amid that panoply of
long-ago, she recognised Severac Bablon.

She dreamed on.

She lay in a huge temple, prone upon its marble floor, in the shadow of
a pillar curiously carven. The lily lay beside her. Two men stood upon
the ot