ave so composedly traversed the
broad flower-strewn carpet, laid with the consent of the authorities
and no little distribution of backsheesh upon the dusty station, and
making deep obeisance, have so serenely led the little cloaked and
veiled figure to the gorgeously caparisoned (if one may apply that term
to the ship of the desert's rigging) camel, which sprawled its neck
upon the ground for the benefit of the motley crowd without.

Anyway, it was an unbelievable thing to happen in Egypt, the land of
veiled and secluded women. It was wonderful enough to know that the
great Hahmed was taking unto himself a wife, but that that wife should
suddenly appear from out of the desert unknown, unseen--well, it took
one's breath away, indeed it did, but well again--seeing the wealth and
power of the man, it was wiser to rejoice than to quibble and gossip
upon such doings.

So all along the Sharia Clot Bey, which is the electrically lit, motor
filled, modern shop-lined road leading from the station, Jill peeped
between the curtains at the throngs of jubilant natives, and the
surrounding Western looking buildings.

She felt hurt to the soul by the modernity of the latter, just as she
had been hurt on arriving in Rome and Venice, until later on she had
found balm in the old stones and streets and buildings of both places
hidden behind the twentieth century.

Jill knew that she was being taken to the palace of the old Sheikh,
uncle of the man she was about to wed, but where it was she had no
idea, nor of the names of the streets, the mosques or the palaces and
the mansions she could spy upon, from between her satin curtains, on
her way to the Bab-es-Shweyla gate. The route they had taken in the
glow of the setting sun, once they had left European Cairo behind, lay
through the El Katai quarter, having chosen the road leading from the
mosque of Sultan Hassan, through the Bazaar of the Amourers to reach
the great gate, the very heart of old Cairo.

And the girl's whole being seemed inundated with the light of the
gorgeous heavens above her as she passed down the Sukkariya, the broad
and pleasant path running under the gate, and her eyes shone as they
rested on the huge and ancient El-Azhar, the university of all Islam.

Past mosque and tomb in the El-Nahassin, whilst minarets turned from
gold to rose, and rose to crimson in the dying sun, up through the
Gamahyia, danced and sang the ever increasing multitude, until the
armed g