The moment was a supreme and glorious emotion.

They were headed south.  And to Ryder’s exhilaration this seemed good.  Cairo offered no hiding place for that fugitive girl.  Even the harbor that McLean could give would not be proof against the legal forces of the Turks.  Law and order, power and police were all in the hands of the husband or father.  Even now the alarm might be given, the telephones ringing.

Aimee must be hidden until she could be smuggled to France—­or until the French authorities could get out their protective documents.  The hiding place that occurred to Ryder was a wild and desperate expedient.

The American hospital at Siut.  The isolation ward—­the pretense of contagious illness.  And then later travel north, in the care of nurses—­

All this, if he could win over one of the doctors.  At that moment winning over a doctor appeared a sane and simple thing to Ryder’s mind.  The only difficulty he recognized was getting Aimee into that hospital.

But they would not be looking for him in the south.  He could manage it, he felt jubilantly.  He could smuggle her into his diggings at night and then make his arrangements.  Anything, everything was possible, now that the nightmare of a palace was left behind them.

South they went then, at a quieter pace, the Arab’s rhythmic footfalls ringing through the still, gray world of before dawn.  Across the Nile they made their way, working out on sandbars to the narrow depths, where Ryder swam beside the swimming horse while Aimee clung to the saddle.  Then south again along the river road.

The sky was light now.  And the river was light.  Only the palms and the villages and the flat dhurra fields were dark.  And in the east behind the Mokattam hills a thin band of gold began to brighten.

Life was stirring.  Small black boys on huge black buffaloes splashed in the river.  Veiled girls with water jars on their high-held heads from which the shawls trailed down to the dust filed past from the villages like a Parthenon frieze.  On the high banks the naked fellaheen were already stooping to the incessant dipping of the shadouf, while from the fields came the plaintive creaking of the well sweep, as some harnessed camel or bullock began its eternal round.

A flock of sheep came down the river road, driven by their ragged shepherds, and a string of camels, burdened beyond all semblance to themselves, bobbed by like rhythmic haystacks, led by a black-robed, bare-footed child, carrying a live turkey in her arms while before her rode her father, in shining pongee robes on a white donkey strung with beads of blue.

And by these travelers there passed in that brightening dawn two other travelers from the north, a pair on a powerful but tired black horse, a man in a military cloak and a green and gold turban about his bronzed head, and behind him, on a pillion, a black-mantled, black-veiled girl, with bare, dangling feet.