And then he remembered that he hadn’t decided yet what to tell her and the time was undoubtedly at hand.

The time was at hand.  The Pendletons were too thorough-going Americans not to abdicate before the young.  They did not saunter self-consciously away and make any opportunity for Jack and Jinny, as sympathetic European chaperons might have done; they sat matter-of-factedly upon the rocks while their competent young people betook themselves to higher heights.

Conscientiously Ryder was pointing out the pyramid fields.

“Gizeh, Abusir, Sakkara, Dahsur—­and now here, if you look—­that’s the Medun pyramid—­that tiny, sharp prick.  If we had glasses....”

“Yes; but why didn’t you like the ball?” murmured Jinny the direct.

“I did like the ball.  Very much.”

“Then why didn’t you stay?”

“I—­I wasn’t feeling top-hole,” he murmured lamely, wondering why girls always wanted to go back and stir up dogs that had gone comfortably to sleep.

“Did it come on suddenly?” said Jinny, unsympathetically, her eyes still upon the pyramids.

Something whimsical twitched at Jack Ryder’s lips.  “Very suddenly.  Like thunder, out of China crost the bay.”

“I suppose that dancing with the same girl in succession brings on the seizures?”

So she had noticed that!...  Not for nothing were those bright, gray eyes of hers!  Not for nothing the red hair.

“Well, I rather think it did,” he said deliberately.  “That girl was a child who hadn’t danced in four years—­so she said, and I believe her.”

And Jinny received what he intended to convey.  “Stepped on your buckled shoon and you felt a martyr?...  But why bolt?  There were other girls who had danced within four years—­”

“I went into the garden,” he murmured.  “The fact is, I was feeling awfully—­queer,” he brought out in an odd tone.

Queer was a good word for it.  He let it go at that.  He couldn’t do better.

Jinny looked suddenly uncertain.  Her pique was streaked with compunction.  She had been horribly angry with him for running away, and she remembered his opposition to the idea enough to be suspicious of any disappearance—­but there was certainly an accent of embarrassed sincerity about him.

Perhaps he had been ill.  Sudden seizures were not unknown in Egypt.  And for all his desert brown he didn’t look very rugged.

She murmured, “I hope you hadn’t taken anything that disagreed with you.”

“H’m—­it rather agreed with me at the time,” said Jack, and then brought himself up short.  “I expect I haven’t looked very sharp after myself—­”

But Jinny did not wholly renounce her idea.  “Does it always take you at dances you don’t want to go to?”

“That’s unfair.  I came, you know.”

“You came—­and went.”

“I’d have been all right if I hadn’t come,” he murmured, and Jinny felt suddenly ashamed of herself.